My five-year-old got really into coloring, so I bought a big poster-sized world map with the country borders drawn on it. It’s all white so he can color in all of the countries. Every day or so, whenever he feels like it, I let him color in a few countries as long as he can remember every country that he’s already colored in. It’s been a really good activity and now he can identify over 50 countries. Here are some observations I’ve made so far:
- He really likes it. Maybe that is just because he is a bit of a geography nerd like his father, but he has shown the map to some of his friends and they always seem really into it as well. A lot of their fascination comes from how big and small some countries are, especially the ones they’ve heard about.
- I have another world map that he uses as a placemat for his breakfast. He pays a lot more attention to it now that he can locate the countries that he’s colored in.
-Countries that he has heard about seem easier for him to remember. We live in a place with a lot of expats so he has had a fair bit of international exposure that may have piqued his interest in this whole project.
-In some ways it seems like the teaching is on autopilot. He’s picked up on concepts like continents and landlocked countries just by observing and asking questions.
-In other ways, things can be difficult to explain. For example, when he sees another world map that uses a different projection (e.g. Mercator vs. Robinson), he’ll point out “mistakes” in the new map. Perhaps what you wrote about orientation and navigation will be useful for tackling these sorts of problems.
Oh, this is wonderful! Some of our "kindergarten" stuff is going to look a bit like this, but I don't think we had taken kids' love for coloring seriously enough. Thank you — we'll update! (And yeah, look forward to the different projections being a big deal in middle school...)
My mom tells stories of how she could never get me to color, and neither of my kids were ever into coloring either (color, yes, drawing pictures and codes and mazes and puzzles, yes, spending lots of time applying color to paper, no). Curious how common this is!
Thanks for your article. It is excellent. Simple but powerful.
Many parents and educators do not realize the importance of teaching younger students Geography alongside History.
We humans love to learn from stories anchored in a specific place. It helps us empathize with the characters and believe that we, too, can overcome difficulties and challenges.
So much fun - I’ll be coming back to this! We do a weekly crockpot dinner on co-op day that is (at least theoretically, haha) tied to our geography for the week. So, Swedish meatballs or Ukrainian borscht or Indian butter chicken or whatever.
Swedish meatballs is a favorite Hendrickson family food! Actually, so is Indian butter chicken. (Guess I gotta finally try borscht, now...) Thanks for this — and look forward to how we'll connect back to geography when we do our "cooking wireframe" later this year...
The Atlas Obscura book is great, but for an additional compelling narrative, maybe use this Kurzgesagt 2025 calendar to tell the story of human geographic expansion over the last 50,000 years?
Oh, we are BIG fans of the Kurzgesaagt posters, here in the Hendrickson family! I'll say that my opinion of them, though, is that they're pretty, but not particularly educative. Maybe it's that a monthly calendar can't be — part of the power of learning is to see the whole and the parts together, and walking through 12 pages over the course of a year doesn't offer that? (But their videos are liquid gold.)
This is great!
My five-year-old got really into coloring, so I bought a big poster-sized world map with the country borders drawn on it. It’s all white so he can color in all of the countries. Every day or so, whenever he feels like it, I let him color in a few countries as long as he can remember every country that he’s already colored in. It’s been a really good activity and now he can identify over 50 countries. Here are some observations I’ve made so far:
- He really likes it. Maybe that is just because he is a bit of a geography nerd like his father, but he has shown the map to some of his friends and they always seem really into it as well. A lot of their fascination comes from how big and small some countries are, especially the ones they’ve heard about.
- I have another world map that he uses as a placemat for his breakfast. He pays a lot more attention to it now that he can locate the countries that he’s colored in.
-Countries that he has heard about seem easier for him to remember. We live in a place with a lot of expats so he has had a fair bit of international exposure that may have piqued his interest in this whole project.
-In some ways it seems like the teaching is on autopilot. He’s picked up on concepts like continents and landlocked countries just by observing and asking questions.
-In other ways, things can be difficult to explain. For example, when he sees another world map that uses a different projection (e.g. Mercator vs. Robinson), he’ll point out “mistakes” in the new map. Perhaps what you wrote about orientation and navigation will be useful for tackling these sorts of problems.
Oh, this is wonderful! Some of our "kindergarten" stuff is going to look a bit like this, but I don't think we had taken kids' love for coloring seriously enough. Thank you — we'll update! (And yeah, look forward to the different projections being a big deal in middle school...)
My mom tells stories of how she could never get me to color, and neither of my kids were ever into coloring either (color, yes, drawing pictures and codes and mazes and puzzles, yes, spending lots of time applying color to paper, no). Curious how common this is!
Hi @Brandon Hendrickson,
Thanks for your article. It is excellent. Simple but powerful.
Many parents and educators do not realize the importance of teaching younger students Geography alongside History.
We humans love to learn from stories anchored in a specific place. It helps us empathize with the characters and believe that we, too, can overcome difficulties and challenges.
So much fun - I’ll be coming back to this! We do a weekly crockpot dinner on co-op day that is (at least theoretically, haha) tied to our geography for the week. So, Swedish meatballs or Ukrainian borscht or Indian butter chicken or whatever.
Swedish meatballs is a favorite Hendrickson family food! Actually, so is Indian butter chicken. (Guess I gotta finally try borscht, now...) Thanks for this — and look forward to how we'll connect back to geography when we do our "cooking wireframe" later this year...
Definitely interested in the trick for using the biome-based Atlas Obscura book!
The Atlas Obscura book is great, but for an additional compelling narrative, maybe use this Kurzgesagt 2025 calendar to tell the story of human geographic expansion over the last 50,000 years?
https://shop-us.kurzgesagt.org/products/12-025-human-era-calendar?srsltid=AfmBOoogZwRekeE5CLx8WzFFEgVb6F7Va36WHAqHlpHknEOGG4lvEpfh&variant=41160118829104
Oh, we are BIG fans of the Kurzgesaagt posters, here in the Hendrickson family! I'll say that my opinion of them, though, is that they're pretty, but not particularly educative. Maybe it's that a monthly calendar can't be — part of the power of learning is to see the whole and the parts together, and walking through 12 pages over the course of a year doesn't offer that? (But their videos are liquid gold.)