Recommended Website:
Children’s Museum of Indianapolis: Map Exhibit
Age Range: 5-13 (Grades K-8)
New ClickSchool Reviewer Michael Hardt wrote today’s ClickSchooling Review. (Read Michael’s bio below.)
The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis partnered with National Geographic on an exhibit called “MAPS: Tools for Adventure” that teaches kids about maps. The exhibit offers this companion website with FREE Unit Study guides for teachers that are outstanding.
These downloadable, printable, book-style guides offer lessons about mapping. Although they are all related to the museum exhibit, they don’t require visiting the museum or even seeing the exhibit to benefit from the lessons.
When you get to the website you’ll see a menu of lessons that include:
- Lesson 1 – Students in grades K-4 are introduced to grid lines, the compass rose, and different kinds of maps. One exercise involves building a small community of toys on the floor and standing up to draw an aerial view of it. In another, kids fold a paper to create grid lines like those on a map. A printable grid is also included.
- Lesson 2 – Learn about historical maps, exploration, navigation, and map projections (different ways you can display the round earth on a flat map). It includes sections on Chinese explorer Zheng He, modern scientists who work with maps, and how to navigate by compass or by the stars. A printable exercise lets you overlay a current map on top of a simplified map from the Lewis and Clark expedition.
- Lesson 3 – Discover GPS (Global Positioning System). If you’re fortunate enough to own a GPS device, you’ll have a blast with some of the activities here, but even if you don’t, it explains how those 24 satellites pinpoint a car or a cell phone or a Garmin. I particularly like the activity that teaches about creating map layers with colored candies: blue for water, green for parks, etc.
The lessons are preceded by an Introduction – really just an overview of what follows. The last two sections are “Culminating Experiences” and “Resources.” The first is specific to the exhibit. The second is a bibliography and list of websites.
Each Unit Study starts with a list of “Objectives.” I like to use these like a checklist: “Map a familiar place–check. Identify parts of a map–check. Distinguish between reference maps and thematic maps–hmm, we could work on that.” At the end of each Unit is a glossary of terms and a metric for testing which could double as a teaching activity.
This is a thorough, careful background in teaching cartography.
Michael Hardt and
Diane Flynn Keith
for ClickSchooling
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**** ABOUT MICHAEL HARDT *****
Michael Hardt is a homeschool dad to two children ages 8 and 9. He says his wife, Camille, does at least 90% of the teaching, but he tries to get involved where he can. :) The Hardt family lives in rural New Hampshire so Internet resources mean a lot to them. Michael used to teach college literature. Now, he manages an engineering team for a software company that makes digital maps. He has also worked as a software engineer on video game graphics at Sony and Electronic Arts. Michael wrote, “I play piano badly, and I still spend too much time browsing the Internet.” That’s good news for ClickSchoolers! You can read Michael’s blog “Family School” (with the subtitle, “Teaching strategies and family humor from inexperienced-but-trying, homeschooling parents” at: http://familyschool.blogspot.com/.
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