day eighty four: me on the map

ben on the map and where he fits :)  fantastic learning
project ... thanks to pinterest or i never would have
found jenn's awesome learning idea!

day eighty four and we have social studies this afternoon.  i wanted to incorporate some web research, some art, and also provide the kids with a really good understanding of where they fit in the world.  i figured this idea by jenn from finally in first could be adapted to my older kids with regards to adding some research to it :)  my kids love visual learning so i am hoping the increasing circles will really resonate with them :)

the circles i cut out for today's project :)

i cut out the circles for both children and then asked them to do something different for each of the areas according to their abilities:

pollyanna (year two)
me - draw a picture of yourself
home - draw our home
street - draw our street and write down the name of it
town - using the internet, find some pictures of our town to print out and attach to the circle
our island - find out what the biggest city is in our island, draw our island
our country - find out what the capital of our country is and print out a map of new zealand to attach to this circle
out continent - find out all the continents and print a picture of the one you live in
our planet - draw our planet and research two interesting facts about our planet

pollyanna's project :)

benjamin (year five)
me - draw a picture of yourself and on the back describe you :)
home - draw our home, write down your favourite place to be at home and one thing you would change to our home if you could
street - draw a map of our street including a compass indicating north
town - find out when our town first became a town and what its main industry was
our island - draw our island and find out what the five most populated cities in our island are
our country - find out what our national flower and animal is and draw them .. print out a map of new zealand to attach to this circle
our continent - print a picture of our continent and name five countries that below to it on the back of the circle
our planet - draw our planet and research five interesting facts about our planet

benjamin's project ... they looked so cool finished!

outcome: this project was totally awesome ... i gave the kids the labels and i helped polly organise hers by size focusing on just adding one more circle at a time, discussing that and then moving to the next largest circle.  it was really exciting seeing ben researching with such interest, i guess because he could see instantly what the project was about and he was very inspired by the little size of his world compared to the ACTUAL world he belonged to ... visually and conceptually this project was outstanding for the kids with regards to identifying and comparing themselves to others and their communities because on geographical reasons.

my sincere thanks goes to jenn from finally in first for this outstanding idea, it really helped with understanding the world as a whole and how towns and countries fit into that space ... especially for pollyanna.  its wonderful teachers like jenn that make the little peeps of today so successful later in life :)