Real-life, Interactive geography games, globe and map activities with printables

April is Earth Month and it's a good time to explore earth science and world geography. Here are hands-on, real-life social studies lessons, map activities and geography games with globes. No computer or internet needed. Playing geography games with globes helps students visualize the big picture better than with maps. Use map activities to locate specific places and use globes for accurate placement of countries in the world at large. Use maps and globes in science lesson plans to explore biomes, habitats, temporal zones and climate. 

Race Around the World map activities: Divide students into teams of 2-4. Give each team a globe and attach a world map to the wall or bulletin board. Here are free printable outline maps. Call out countries, cities and provinces for teams to locate their globes. The first team to find the location wins a point. After the location is found indicate it on the wall map with a pin or sticky note arrow (available at most office supply retailers). 

Earth Science Jeopardy: Students may play individually or in teams. Draw a Jeopardy grid on a Dry Erase board, overhead projector or chalkboard. Label five categories across the top of the Earth Science Jeopardy board. Here are some suggested earth science categories: Rivers, Mountain Ranges, Africa, Asia, Islands, Europe, United States, South America, Bodies of Water, Northern Hemisphere, Locations that begin with ____ (fill in letter). Fill in dollar amounts as in regular Jeopardy. Players select a category and value. The geography games leader calls out a place and team members must locate it on globes. Give teams buzzers or bells to sound when they find the answer. 

Latitude and Longitude Hide 'n Seek map activities: Use the free printable longitude and latitude maps and time zone lesson plans to explain the how lines and degrees of latitude and longitude work. Official latitude lines--also called parallels--go east to west and longitude lines go north and south. There are 180 latitude lines--90 above the equator (north) and 90 below (south). There are 360 lines of longitude (180 in the eastern hemisphere and 180 in the western hemisphere). They are divided into 24 groups which define time zones as well as geographical locations. 

Plotting those coordinates and other graph math activities. Use coordinate geometry to place cities and landforms in lines of latitude and longitude. Ask students to list different earth science landforms located with the latitude and longitude markings. Ask students list cities and locales based on latitude and longitude coordinates or bearings. Here are free printable graph math activities. 

Time zones bingo map activities: Using the small dial attached to the top of the globe, teach students how read lines of longitude to determine time zone. Call out a time zone. Students fill their card by locating and listing a city or province in that time zone. Require older students to calculate what time it is in different countries by giving the time in another time zone. Explain the Greenwich Mean Time system. Here are free printable globes and longitude and latitude maps to help. 

Multicultural activities for world social studies lesson plans with free printables

 

Hello friends of the Omschool! Teacher Omi (grama) has been having big fun creating a welcome montage in many  languages on her front door. And it got me thinking that these would make excellent multilingual activities and interactive bulletin board displays for social studies lesson plans. So here are cross-curricular multicultural lesson plan ideas to build global understanding of different languages and cultures. I've included free printable around the world, world flags, language and alphabet charts as well. This is part one of a series of global lesson plans beginning with greetings and flags. 

Welcome Wall: Purchase magnetic letters in English, Russian, Hebrew and Greek alphabets and any other alphabet you wish. Or use free printable alphabet charts. Here a free printable Greek alphabet from It's a Greek Life. Ben Crowder offers free printable Russian (Cyrillic) alphabets, plus printable language activities for Thai, Coptic (Greek alphabet of Copts in last-stage ancient Egypt), Ugaritic (ancient Phoenician cuniform) , Greek, Hebrew and Ogham (ancient British/Irish) alphabets. Here are free printable Chinese alphabet lesson plans. Use letters to write greetings in different languages. If using magnetic letters in classrooms, arrange these on a white board or metal door or window frame. Or print cards to affix to any window or wall.

 You might say "hello", "welcome" or any greeting native to the country. Mine says: 

Konnichiwa-Good Day (Japan)

czesc- Hi (Polish)

liefdt-Love (Dutch, didn't have enough letters to do Welkom) 

Добро пожаловать (Dobro pozhalovat) Welcome (Russian) Other former USSR nations use variations of this.

Wilkommen- welcome (German)

Shalom- Hebrew (Jewish Israel)

Ola-Hello (Spanish)

Cead mile failte-a thousand welcomes (Irish)

Pax-peace (Latin)

Howdy-(American slang)

Jambo-Hello (Swahili)

Bonjour-Good Day (French, Belgian)

Xush Kelibsiz-welcome (Uzbekistan)

Kalimera-Good Morning (Greek)

Assalamu alaikum or Inshallah- peace be unto you or if Allah wills (Muslim greeting used in many areas in the middle east) 

Interactive bulletin board or white board lesson plans. Create a hands-on bulletin board/white board activities by placing a large world map in the middle. Write greetings from list above on individual index cards and place in an envelope half attached to bulletin board. Then attach lengths of yarn to stickers affixed to countries on the map, from the list. Attach the other end to empty zippered bags that you've attached around the map. The student selects the greeting an places it in the corresponding bag. For the white board variation, use magnetic letters to spell the greetings and match them to the country. 

Flags around the world: Print these free printable world flags to match each one to the country or greeting on your welcome wall. Make a bingo game out of it. Or get a world map puzzle with each country being a different piece. Match flags and countries. 

World Map puzzle. You can turn any map into a puzzle by cutting out the different countries, states, provinces or oblasts (regions or Russia) or federal subjects (like states, in Russia--there are 85!). Have students memorize countries by their shape. They can then reassemble them. Or you can provide blank maps for students to color and label by country. They can then create map keys to indicate colors represent which region, country or state. Good luck with Russia!  

Hello and Goodbye. Teach students pronunciations for basic greetings, salutations and farewells in various world languages. Have them role play the greetings and responses to each other .

Make sure students know this is only a sampling and you've just taught the dominant language. Very few countries are like the USA, speaking one main language. Many countries are made up of people from various groups who speak different regional and cultural dialects or completely different languages. 

How many countries you cover will depend on age of students. Don't worry about getting every one. You'll only kill the joy of the lesson. This is about helping children learn about different countries and how they speak. It's not meant to be exhaustive, just fun and horizon-widening.