My aunt was kind enough to get us a large, wall-sized laminated map for our geography lessons. However, I was still looking for something that was lap-sized, something they could hold an touch during our reading of Holling C. Holling’s Seabird.
Seabird is lovely, teaching geography through story as only Holling could. Generally, during a Holling reading, I trace the path of the main character {in this instance, an Ivory Gull whose journey begins in Greenland} on the map on the wall using a whiteboard marker. If the children have a blank map on their laps, they can copy what I have done onto their own pages, reinforcing the lesson. Once they are tall enough {or I have it set up better, perhaps}, they will be able to take turns drawing the journey paths on the wall map.
Anyhow, I have been on the lookout for a one-stop website from which to print maps. In the past, I believe I posted a link to some blank maps that would work for one specific Holling work, but I wanted something better. I wanted to be able to print whatever I needed, all from one source. North America? The whole world? A specific state?
I wanted it all.
And I do believe I’ve found it.
Enter National Geographic’s MapMaker. This site is designed for map printing. There are three levels of “zoom,” as I like to think of it: the whole world, by continent, or an individual country. I can’t zoom into an individual U.S. state, but I assume that I could figure out how to cut the map down to what I want and then blow it up to fit a page if I really needed something so specific.
This is going to be perfect for when we study the journeys of Marco Polo in Year Three.
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For those of you who wonder about this sort of thing: an average geography lesson, in which we read one chapter from a Holling book and trace the journey discussed, takes between ten and fifteen minutes. We average one of these lessons per week, though I do notice the children “practicing” with their maps on their own at times.
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