Here's a fun way to practice continents. I found that Bear knew her continents really well on flat maps, but on a globe, she sometimes had trouble figuring out the difference between the Americas versus Europe and Africa. She wasn't making the distinction between the two masses. So I made a cube with cardboard from our numerous moving boxes, lined the cube with blue paper and printed out the outlines of the continents. Then I put packing tape around the whole thing.
Bear enjoys throwing the cube and figuring out which continent comes up top. Then we locate the continent on a map, or the globe, and sometimes pull out the animal cards and plastic animals (I still need to get plastic animals for Australia and Asia) and find those that live in the continent we rolled.
I've been debating whether to get a Montessori continents map. Part of me thinks that I've already been able to teach her the continents just fine without it, but then I see posts like this one at My Montessori Journey and it makes me very tempted to get that map!
I was looking at this when Batman came in, and he wanted to do this.
ReplyDeleteI think if you simplify the globe to its shapes, it's easier to identify. I made a globe out of a blue ball.
ReplyDeletehttp://joyfullearner.blogspot.com/2010/04/earth-day-2010.html
Great idea! Thanks.
ReplyDeletei always wonder if my son could identify the continents because of the colors; you know each continent has a different color. But your method is a sure way to test if he knows them by shape or color! thanks for sharing!!!
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