Last week, a giant floor map from
National Geographic was on display in our gym. With shoes off, we explored the continent - the areas colored green and tan, the rivers, the capital cities marked with a star, etc. We located the direction north and identified the major bodies of water surrounding Africa. Then we played a version of geography Simon Says with our Kindergarten buddies. Here are some of the directions the kids had to follow:
Stand on the equator.
Find Madagascar and make a circle around it.
Sit on a desert.
Hop on the Nile River.
Stand on a capital city.
Swim to Madagascar.
It was fun for all and gave the children a great visual sense of the size of this amazing continent. One of my second graders commented, "I never realized how big the Sahara Desert really was." After several weeks of study, it was wonderful to see how much they remembered.
I'm trying to find a link to National Geographic so you can learn more about this map or others like it. So far, I've been unsuccessful. I'll post the information as soon as I get it.
