Tag: geography

Education, Geography, K-12, Language Arts, Math

Tooth Traditions Around the World

Terri Eichholz

Silvia Tolisano of the Langwitches Blog shared in this post how a teacher from Argentina is trying to help her first graders learn about the “tooth” traditions of other countries.  Students are invited to add to this Flipgrid their own stories about what happens when they hit that favorite milestone of losing a tooth. Similar to the other lessons that I’ve shared that help students to learn about commonalities and differences throughout the world, this is a wonderful idea for crowd-sourcing knowledge from our young people about a topic that means quite a bit to them!  Unfortunately, there is a disadvantage for those of us who are mono-lingual, as several of the videos that have already been shared may be in a language you do not know.  (I tried using Google Translate on my phone with some interesting results…)   Maybe including some hand-drawn pics like the one below might help.

I enjoyed hearing Maggie H.’s comparison of England and India (I think my students will be horrified to hear that some children plant their teeth!).  Considering the wide variety in monetary value that teeth seem to bring just within my tiny class, it might also be fun to research the currency exchanges mentioned and do some math along with your geography lesson.

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image from Cathy Meier on Flickr
Apps, Education, Geography, K-5, Student Products

You Just Won a Trip to Turkey!

Terri Eichholz

I finally got around to trying this Mother’s Day idea this year – with a bit of green screen magic mixed in.  My GT first graders have been researching different countries, so they each made a Mother’s Day video for their moms incorporating some of their research.  After talking about perspective, and what they thought their moms would like to see in each country, they selected some highlights from their library books.  Then they made short videos “congratulating” their moms on winning trips to their respective countries.  We used some Creative Commons images and videos from Pixabay and Discovery Ed to create their final “Winning” montages.  You can click on the link below to see an example.  (Note: The video quality is a bit off because the young lady was wearing a bluish-green shirt that day – a little difficult to balance with our green screen program without making her a talking head!)

turkey.PNG
Click here to see Olivia’s great video!
Books, Education, Geography, Social Studies

This is How We Do It

Terri Eichholz

My gifted and talented first graders study geography and choose different countries to research.  @storymamas recently tweeted about a book called, This is How We Do It, by Matt Lamothe, and I thought it would be a good resource to use with this class.  Children like to see the differences and similarities of places around the world.  A few years ago, I sent out a Twitter plea for people from other countries to add pictures of their playgrounds to this slide show, and my students enjoy comparing the sites to our own and finding the locations on a map.

Lamothe went much further than collecting images on a slideshow for his book.  You can read about his writing process for This is How We Do It here.  He created all of the illustrations in his book based on photographs shared with him by families in seven different countries.  My students were fascinated with everything from how the featured children got to school to how they slept.  They were surprised by uncanny resemblances to our own culture (they have a Smarboard in their classroom, too!) as well as unimaginable contrasts (an entire family sleeping in one bed!)

You can download a free activity kit to accompany the book here.

Geography, K-12, Social Studies, Student Products

We Love Maps

Terri Eichholz

“We Love Maps” was the most recent theme for the bi-annual Barbara Petchenik Children’s Map Competition. The contest is open to entries from children all over the world who are 15 years old or younger, and it really is amazing to see the creativity displayed in the wide range of winners chosen by judges at the International Cartographic Association’s annual meeting this month.  You really must click through the gallery of pictures to appreciate the artistry of these children, as well as the messages they chose to convey with their renderings.  Special shout-out to Champ Turner, from Austin, TX, for having his map chosen for the “Public Award” with the most votes.  With 34 different countries participating, it’s nice to see a winner from my home state!  To learn more about the competition (which only happens every 2 years, unfortunately!), click here.

map
image from Pixabay (since I don’t have permission to reproduce the actual contest entries)
Education, Fun Friday, Geography

Mind-Blowing Maps

Terri Eichholz

For this week’s Phun Phriday, we have a collection of unusual maps that you probably won’t find in any atlas.  Don’t worry; these aren’t election maps (they are far more interesting, in my opinion).

First of all, head on over to this article on Thrillest to find out the favorite television shows in each of the United States.  Some are not so surprising, but others definitely seem a bit incongruous.

Maybe the t.v. shows have some connection to the most distinctive last name in each state?  Or maybe not.  Jensen seems poised to take over the country, so someone should definitely do some research on that particular trend.

I know this blog has readers all over the world, so I apologize that the first two maps are America-centric.  Rest assured that this last resource covers anyone as it speculates what would happen if we put the entire population of the world into one city.

Yes, you read that correctly.

People really think of the most interesting ways to visualize maps…

Lego Micro World Map
Lego Micro World Map
3-12, Education, Games, Geography, Social Studies, Websites

Pick the Real U.S. States

Terri Eichholz

My 1st graders are learning a little geography at the moment as they program their Dash robot to hunt for treasure amongst the continents.  As I was looking for some supplemental resources, I ran across this brain-twisting quiz from Mental Floss.  It’s deceptively difficult.  The concept is simple: select all of the states from the list without making a mistake.  I was doing good until I accidentally tapped “North York.”

If you want your students to play this in class, you might want to use the Page Eraser Chrome extension to take care of the distracting ads.  If you play it at home all on your own, I would keep the ads so you can blame them every time you mess up 🙂

Pick the Real US States from Mental Floss
Pick the Real US States from Mental Floss