In our history studies we have come to the end of our Ancient Greece studies but before Story of the World moves into Roman History it takes a chapter to visit the Americas and discuss the Olmecs in Central America and the Nazca Drawings in South America. Rather than just color in the map which is included in the activity book I decided to have the kids draw a map on their own. After reading "
The Core" a few months ago and really liking what I read about Geography there I have been meaning to draw maps more and make that a part of our usual school work.
I had the kids fold the long 11x17 paper in half both horizontally and vertically. These were our Equator and a random longitude like that I drew onto the map in the book we were using as our reference. From there we added in our Tropic of Cancer and Capricorn as well as the Arctic and Antarctic circles. Then we just sketched in the continents.
Here is Sophie's finished product. She was about to crumple it up because she didn't like how North America turned out.
Ian was happy with how his turned out even if it is rather skinny.
Henry wouldn't even try this exercise. He wanted to trace it but I wouldn't let him. So he refused to even give this method a try.
This was mine. As usual it is rather light. But I think it was fun.
We are going to be doing more of this.
2 comments:
When I was a freshman in high school, our Social Studies teacher had an interesting final exam. The entire test was to draw a map of the entire world, which we knew about ahead of time. The rest of the test was a list of mountains, rivers, and cities that we had to draw in accurately. I loved that test because I had studied well for it and got an A. That's a good way to learn about geography.
I want to try this sometime. I bet my oldest would like it. Good idea.
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