Sunday, November 19, 2017

Fun Map Activities to teach your Preschooler about Basic Geography

Geography is a challenging subject for many school-age children, and part of it may be not being taught enough of it at an earlier age. Perhaps because so many adults find geography difficult and unexciting, they're unlikely to find fun ways to teach it to younger children.

Here are a few ideas for making geography memorable for your preschooler, not to mention fun for both of you!
  • Puzzles: There are many geography puzzles that make geography easier and more fun to learn. For instance, you could get a floor puzzle of the United States to help kids learn where all the states are, or even a map of the world to help teach the locations of major countries and give your child a sense of scale of the world we live in.
  • Geography Bingo: Make or buy Bingo boards with states, countries, rivers, mountain ranges, or other features. For younger kids, you can randomly call out the names on their boards, or even make their boards the pictures or shapes of the states instead of the names. For older or more proficient kids, you can make it more challenging by making it into a memory game. For instance, you could call out the capitals, and they would have to choose the corresponding states on their board.
  • Geography Twister: Get an old flat sheet at a thrift store or repurpose one from your own closet for this fun game. Using a permanent marker, draw a map of the US or the world on the sheet. Your preschooler will love to help by coloring in or painting the states or countries. Also make a deck of cards with the names of states or countries on them. Shuffle and draw the cards one at a time to tell your kids where to put each hand or foot.
  • Hopscotch: Grab some sidewalk chalk and head outside to play this fun game! Draw a simple map of the United States, the continents, or whatever other geography you want to teach. When your child plays hopscotch on the map, they have to name each state they hop in.

Learning geography doesn't have to be either boring or difficult. These fun games will help your child better remember basic geography such as the US states, European countries, or continents. At the Montessori School of Flagstaff Sunnyside Campus, our teachers incorporate hands-on and interactive learning techniques throughout the subject areas, including geography.  To find out more about how our Montessori program works, contact us today to tour our school.
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Author: verified_user