Geography Lesson: Where On Earth Do I Live?
Kristy Gustafson
Franklin Elementary
1510 E 25th St
Sterling IL 61081
Promoting
Geographic Knowledge Through Literature Workshop
July 7-19, 2002
Geography Themes: Location & Place
Grade Level: 2-3
Essential Elements: The World in Spatial Terms and Places & Regions
Geography Standards:
#3 How to analyze the spatial organization of people, places, and environments on Earths surface.
#4 The physical and human characteristics of places.
Overview: The purpose of this lesson is to help children understand where they live in the world, and become aware of what a town, state, country, continent and earth are. They will begin to look closely at the characteristics that make up their room, home, yard, town, state, country, continent, and planet.
Materials Needed:
Where Do I Live? By Neil Chesanow
Me on the Map By Joan Sweeney
Maps of your town/city, state, country, continent & earth
Copies of child’s “Where on Earth Do I Live” book,
Blue construction paper cover’s (cut in a large circle, 2 per child.)
Green construction paper
Art material (coloring tools, construction paper, glue, scissors, magazine pictures, etc.
Procedure:
Introduction:
First get a sense of what your children already know about their whereabouts by asking questions like, “Where do you live?”, “What state do you live in?”, What Country?”, “What continent?”, & “What planet?” List these on the board as you go. Now ask, “What is the biggest, or smallest place amongst these?”
Follow up this discussion by reading Where Do I live? By Neil Chesanow.
Discuss their previous brainstorming and compare it with the story they’ve just heard. Have they changed their perception of what they believe is the biggest or smallest place or were they correct?
Then tell the children they are going to make their own storybook about where they live compared to the world. Show them a sample of what they’ll be making.
First have them create a mental map of their own room. Discuss details they will add to their bedroom map. Look at the story for added ideas.*
*Share the book Me on the Map, by Joan Sweeney. It is a similar story with simpler text and great pictures of maps that will help the children with their drawing ability.
Now have the children finish the sentence on page one. After they are done with that they are to design a map of their room. This page can be done as homework.
Day Two
Reread pages 6-13 in the story, Where Do I Live? Focus on their home, street, yard, & neighborhood. Using the book for ideas of characteristics of these places.
Have the children close their eyes and create a mental picture of their home then draw their home, yard and street. Next they will finish their sentences. This can be done as homework.
Reread Where Do I Live?, looking this time at the town/city pages. Ahead of time go to mapquest.com and hunt for a map of your town/city to print off for the children to each have or have them draw one themself.
Have the children explore their map and find things that may be familiar to them. They can color or highlight them.
Have them find their home and color it a special color. Then have them find their school and color it another color. Let them try to find the shortest route from home to school. Then glue onto their third page and finish the sentence starters.
Day Four
Focus on their state. Looking at maps and discuss as a class what things they think make their state special. Talk about the characteristics of the land, people, food, etc.
Copy a blank state map for the children to use and glue onto this page.
They are to fill the map by drawing the characteristics pertaining to their state. They can draw or use magazine pictures to make a collage. Finish the sentence starter.
Day Five
Focus on your country using a wall map. Give the children a copy of your country to be glued into their book. Discuss with the class trips they’ve taken and things they’ve noticed about the land paying close attention to landforms they may have seen.
Next the children will color, & design their map of their country and finish the sentence starters.
Day Six
Focus on the Continent. Use wall maps and a copy of a blank version for the children to use in their book. Discuss what countries are on your continent and features of it like, weather, landforms.
Next the children will add characteristics to their own map and glue onto their page and finish the sentence starters.
Day Seven
Focus on the Earth and discuss, brainstorm what it is and characteristics like landforms and oceans.
Next have your children color and add characteristics to their map and glue onto their page. Then finish the sentence starters.
Cover Creation: Take both blue circles and give the kids green construction paper. They can tear or cut the green to create land and glue onto the blue to create on the earth. On the front cover write their title, Where on Earth do I live? by _____________. Staple together.
Any of the pages in the book can be designed with any kind of art material. Your imagination is your guide. Have fun!
Evaluation: Class discussion
Individually made books
Sharing their final product with the class
Resources:
The Armadillo From Amarillo, by Lynne Cherry, (Harcourt Brace & Company, Voyager Books, 1994, ISBN 0-15-201955-3)
Where Do I Live? by Neil Chesanow, (Scholastic Inc., 1995, ISBN 0-8120-9241-4)
Mapping Penny’s World, by Loreen Leedy, (Scholastic Inc., 2000, ISBN 0-439-28596-8)
Me On The Map, by Joan Sweeney, (Dragonfly Books, Crown Publishers Inc., New York, 1997, ISBN 0-517-88557-3)
This is where I live. It’s my room. It is special because ___________________________
My room is in _________________. I live with ____________________________
_________________________________________________.
Our address is ______________________________. Around my _____________ you will see ___________________________________________________________________________
My home is in the town of _________________________________________________. One special thing I like about my town is ___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
Our town is one of many in the state of _________________. It is famous for ______________
___________________________________________________________________________
One thing I see a lot in our state is _________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
____________________ is one of 50 states that make up our country. It is the _______________ When I have traveled I have seen __________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
I would like to see_____________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
Our country is a part of the continent called _____________________________________
Something special about our continent is ____________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
Our continent is one of 7 that are surrounded by many oceans and seas that make up a whole planet. We live on the planet ______________.