Orienteering: Map Skills

Second and third graders practice with basic map skills. They create their own map including a legend and a compass rose. This fabulous plan has many excellent websites linked which allow learners to explore maps of all kinds; including...

What's around the block? Or down the street? Ask your pupils to tap into their map skills by drafting the area around their home and school.

Help younger learners develop their map skills with this simple worksheet, which includes 12 questions utilizing a map legend that involves highway markers, population indicators, and other landmark signs.

Find five activities all about longitude and latitude! Use oranges to show the equator and prime meridian, plot birthdays on a map using coordinates, and plan a dream vacation. 

Celebrate the geography of the Americas and develop map skills through a series of activities focused on the Western Hemisphere. Learners study everything from earthquakes and volcanoes of the Americas and the relationship between...

Enhance scholars' map skills using this worksheet displaying the land of Kahitsa’an from the series, The Realm, by K.L. Glanville. The activity helps readers visualize the make believe-land, examine its attributes, and answer 10 short...

Young archaeologists practice their mapping skills by creating a detailed site map of their room or another room in their home. After indicating walls, windows, doors, and closets, they add furniture and objects, labeling each item.

Flat maps and globes are described in this short video. Students share the differences between the two using helpful props and demonstrations.

Students explore the concept of landmarks.  For this landmark lesson, students brainstorm different landmarks around their community and nationally.  Students then identify the patterns in Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings or landmarks. 

Students are introduced to the key concepts of maps; direction, pathway/line, shape and symbol. They create the pathways and shapes they have "mapped" out on paper on the floor. They dance along the paths.