Tips for Prents About Teaching Kids About Geography
Learn Directions -- Location
To help young children learn location, make sure they know the
colour and style of the building in which they live, the name of
their town, and their street address. Then, when you talk about
other places, they have something of their own with which to
compare.
* Children need to understand positional words. Teach children
words like "above" and "below" in a natural way when you talk
with them or give them directions. When picking up toys to put
away, say, "Please put your toy into the basket on the right" or,
"Put the green washcloth into the drawer." Right and left are as
much directional terms as north, south, east, and west. Other
words that describe such features as colour, size, and shape are
also important.
* Show your children north, south, east, and west by using your
home as a reference point. Perhaps you can see the sun rising in
the morning through a bedroom window that faces east and setting
at night through the westerly kitchen window:
* Reinforce their knowledge by playing games. Once children have
their directional bearings, you can hide an object, for example,
then give them directions to its location: "two steps to the
north, three steps west. . . ."
* Use pictures from books and magazines to help your children
associate words with visual images. A picture of a desert can
stimulate conversation about the features of a desert -- arid and
barren. Work with your children to develop more complex
descriptions of different natural and cultural features.
Maps
Put your child's natural curiosity to work. Even small children
can learn to read simple maps of their school, neighbourhood, and
community. Here are some simple map activities you can do with
your children.
* Go on a walk and collect natural materials such as acorns and
leaves to use for an art project. Map the location where you
found those items.
* Create a treasure map for children to find hidden treats in the
back yard or inside your home. Treasure maps work especially well
for birthday parties.
* Look for your city or town on a map. If you live in a large
city or town, you may even be able to find your street. Point out
where your relatives or your children's best friends live.
* Find the nearest park, lake, mountain, or other cultural or
physical feature on a map. Then, talk about how these features
affect your child's life. Living near the ocean may make your
climate moderate, moors may provide an open path for high winds,
and mountains may block some weather fronts.
* By looking at a map, your children may learn why they go to a
particular school. Perhaps the next nearest school is on the
other side of a park, a busy street, or a large hill. Maps teach
us about our surroundings by portraying them in relation to other
places.
* Before taking a trip, show your children a map of where you are
going and how you plan to get there. Look for other ways you
could go, and talk about why you decided to use a particular
route. Maybe they can suggest other routes.
* Encourage your children to make their own maps using legends
with symbols. Older children can draw a layout of their street,
or they can illustrate places or journeys they have read about.
Some books, like Winnie-the-Pooh and The Wizard of Oz, contain
fanciful maps. These can be models for children to create and
plot their own stories.
* Keep a globe and a map of the Great Britain near the television
and use them to locate places talked about on television
programmes, or to follow the travels of your favourite football
team.
