Helping Kids Learn About Geography

With the Olympics coming up you might be talking more to your kids about different countries and pulling out maps or a globe to show them where different countries are.

If this is your first time introducing concepts of geography to little ones, check out this great list of books about maps and globes from Gift of Curiosity. The list includes basic factual books as well as story books that involve mapping and get kids thinking about the fact that they are part of a neighborhood, town, state, nation and world.

You can do that physically with these Me on the Map activities from Living Montessori Now. I love the basic nesting circles, but stacking boxes and towers are a really cool representation of the different places we are part of as well.

Whether your kids are just learning about maps or are a bit older, National Geographic has a great collection of map skills activities for all ages of elementary school students. From mapping the classroom or the park for the littlest students to studying historic maps and comparing them to those of today, there’s something for everyone here.

How do you use maps in learning? I have an old atlas I pull out a lot when we talk about different countries, we have some nation and world puzzles, and I’ve got my eye out for a secondhand globe we can play with. I’d love to hear your ideas, too.

[Photo by Winn Brewer via National Geographic.]

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All About Armenia for Kids

The other day I shared some crafts involving fall leaves, but there are a lot of fun leaf-related activities that don’t use real leaves, so I wanted to share some of those, too.

Like these watercolor leaves from The Artful Parent. These are so pretty and would be great to make a garland or decorate the table for Thanksgiving. You could experiment with different kinds of paper, combine watercolors and crayons, use an eyedropper to apply liquid watercolors — there are lots of different ways to play with this one!

Because I’m a knitter of course I love any project that involves yarn, so this fall leaf lacing craft from Our Kid Things is right up my alley. The multicolored yarn they used is a lot of fun, or stick with fall colors. Either way it’s a great fine motor skill activity!

Using leaf shapes to make other crafts is a great way to incorporate leaves into the classroom without having to use actual leaves. For little kids this sensory painting activity from Kids Craft Room would be a lot of fun (I think this would be fun for some older kids and adults, too, to be honest) and makes a fun and easy decoration.

Of course leaf activities don’t just have to be crafts. Check out this great leaf matching game from Made to be a Momma. These leaves are so cute and after you’ve prepped the game you can play it over and over with no prep. Use fewer sets for younger kids and the full set for older ones.

You can also use leaf shapes in all sorts of learning activities, like in this fall leaf number tower activity from Fun Learning for Kids. There are leaves with single numbers on them that kids can use to stack cubes on in one-to-one correspondence, as well as ones that show dots like dice so kids can add up the numbers to build their stacks.

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