Light at Home: Homeschool Co-op: Maps Class

Homeschool Co-op: Maps Class

Posted by My Heart Song

4/22/2015

I taught Maps/Geography as a class for the Kindergarten-1st Graders this semester at our homeschool co-op.

I had 12 kids in my class - 10 boys (!!!) and 2 girls. My son was one of the boys. Him I can handle. But him along with 9 other boys as crazy as he is... was more than I could handle! I was very thankful for the other mom who was my faithful class helper.

I used a curriculum that a fellow homeschooling mom had used a few years ago at our co-op for this same class. It was nice to have lesson plans already laid out for me. I changed a few things to add my own flair, but I appreciated her willingness to share what she'd created and done before. Why reinvent the wheel?!

The kids enjoyed doing a floor puzzle of the USA and another floor puzzle of the world (focusing on the seven continents, which we memorized).

I brought in numerous books for the kids to look at / read that were related to geography. One fun project was to find the compass rose on every map.

On our last day, we enjoyed a class party. I made a huge cookie shaped like our state of Indiana and decorated it with a few major rivers and cities. I got the idea for this from a project my daughter did a few years ago and also from this Indiana blogger/teacher.

We ate the cookie in class (or about 1/4 of it, actually, because it was HUGE).

On party day, I had the kids play "pin the state on the map" with a few states (like Indiana, California, Florida, Oklahoma). This was a lot of fun. Here are three of the students showing where their Indiana states ended up.