Map it out!

For the past two weeks we have been studying map skills.  So as I was on my newest addiction, pinterest, I found the coolest way to teach the differences between a neighborhood, city, state, country, and continent.

 This is the original picture from pinterest that I saw the idea from.

You can find this original posting here...Finally in First

I began the lesson discussing all of the different types of places you could find on a map.  Then I pulled up google earth and showed them our school on the map (we used it as our neighborhood circle).  We talked about how small that one little dot was compared to the whole Earth.  As the circles got bigger, we typed into google earth our city, state, country, continent.  It was so neat watching Google Earth getting bigger and bigger each time.  The kids really enjoyed it.  We drew something to represent each circle.  Then we discussed how we are just really a small part of the whole world. 

Although I do not have a picture of our circles (forgot my camera), they are fairly similar to the original picture.  I have added a link to the map circles I created in order to do this project.  Feel free to download them (just click the picture below), I just ask that you become a follower first.  I copied the circles on different colors of paper like above as well.