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.  

Best I Can Read! early reader books, authors and illustrators from my childhood

Hello my friends of the Omschool! I have good news! Remember my post about how to find kids books you had loved and lost? I told you about a book I'd been hunting for, for probably 56  years. All I could recall was that a boy wanted to get his mother green lipstick for her birthday. Well I unearthed it along with another book my best friend Heather had that I had loved. I couldn't recall the title just the beautiful medieval pictures. That one is called Shadow Castle and the other is The Happy Birthday Present. 

Now, something especially wonderful about The Happy Birthday Present is that it is one of the earliest offerings from the I Can Read! Book Club which is probably the oldest book club for kids. It began with Little Bear (Else Holmelund Minarik) which featured early illustrations by Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are). 

I wasn't in the book club but you often found the books at doctor's office waiting rooms, along with Uncle Arthur which I'll write about later. Anyway, I must have been about 4 when I read the first one, The Fire Cat. And I was so proud because I read it myself. Here are my favorite books and authors from the I Can Read! series. 

The Fire Cat (Esther Averill, 1960) I just learned that this is part of a Cat Club series I'm going to explore. 

The Happy Birthday Present (Joan Heilbroner, 1962) I'm really taken with Mary Chalmers illustrations which left an indelible image in memory, particularly Davy's green lollipop. 

Danny and the Dinosaur (Syd Hoff, 1958) Actually I liked all of Syd Hoff's I Can Read! books. You might mistake his work for H.A. Rey of Curious George fame. 

Frog and Toad series (Arnold Lobel) Lobel won the Caldicott Medal several times as well as a Newbery Medal, the highest honors in children's literature. His other works are Fables, Mouse Soup and Owl at Home. I still recall my anti-book son Jakob being lured into reading and loving it with books like Owl at Home. "Tear Water Tea" being his most favorite (mine too!)! 

Hurry, Hurry Edith Thatcher Hurd and her illustrator husband Clement Hurd (and then their son Thatcher Hurd) gave us some of the best in children's literature. You'll know Clement Hurd for his illustrations of "Goodnight Moon" (Margaret Wise Brown) She studied at the prestigious and very lateral thinking school called Bank Street College of Education (where I had aspired to go in the early 1980s, but let fear of failure stop me). Many of Edith's books are of ships, the ocean and creatures that live there and that resonates too. 

Emmett's Pig (Mary Stolz, a favorite author who's book The Noonday Friends is one of my top picks for unconventional and relatable girl sheros. I will be hunting this up for my grandsonny-son Emmett. 

And last but by no means least is the Mrs. Malaprop of the housekeeping domain, the one and only Amelia Bedelia. Peggy Parish wrote the first and there have been many more, thankfully! 

I hope you'll find as much joy in these delightful stories as I have! 

Earth Month STEM lesson plans using recycled egg cartons activities with printables

Greetings from the Omschool! Teacher Omi is loving the longer and warmer days of Spring. And right around the corner, is Earth Day, part of Earth Month in April. There are so many ecological ways to celebrate the coming spring and the new life of Easter. One of my favorites is to practice reducing, reusing and recycling. 

As a teacher and homeschool parent (now grandparent) I try to model good Earth Month habits all year long by recycling materials, reusing them as classroom materials and reducing landfill waste. Here are STEM and science experiments and science crafts made from recycled egg cartons. Repurpose recycled egg cartons into homemade science crafts and hands-on science games to save money and the environment. I've included links for free downlands and printable science lesson plans too. Print on recycled paper for the win! 

And you know how I work: lesson plans are written for all ages (Yes, my newest little grands, Flora and Max, you too! can't leave our precious babies and toddlers out!) These can be used in preschool, elementary and multiage classrooms and in a home school) I'll label the activities for babies and toddlers (MF Max and Flora!) 

Attribute sorting science games. Sensory exploration is the core of science. Students can practice exploration in hands-on science games. To play, pass out clean, recycled egg cartons with each section labeled with words or pictures of attributes. Attributes will depend on materials being sorted and science subjects being studied. Items may be sorted by color, shape, size, living/non-living, wood/metal/plastic, anything you want. (MF give them plastic eggs to sort and just touch and feel)

You can play this as a scavenger hunt in which students search for objects to fit each attribute category. Labeling and sorting materials into recycled egg cartons builds science vocabulary, adjective usage and descriptive powers. It has tie-ins to math, language, writing, even social studies. (MF activities: have older kids make a sensory activity for littles by creating homemade windchimes from trash. Baby will love laying and his back and listening to the pretty sounds. Or give a toddler a pile of empty boxes to stack and knock over.

Egg carton Sensory Exploration sorting STEM games for Earth Month. Sort by

Taste: Sweet, sour, salty, bitter, metallic, tart 
Smell: spicy, bitter, sour, soapy, flowery, fruity, moldy
Touch: furry, fuzzy, smooth, cool, warm, hard, rough, scratchy, bumpy, squashy (malleable), sticky
Sound: squeak, ring, buzz, beep, pop, clang, snap, crackle, scrape, scratch

(MF: give the littles "chewable" sensory items to manipulate. Children learn first about their world by taste, smell and touch. They "braille" their world as Dr. Leo Buscaglia called it.  You can make a simple rattle with a plastic vitamin bottle with some jingle bells or blocks in it. Seal the lid super tight and let the little shake away!  They can find endless entertainment in crinkly paper, too! 

Ecology STEM experiments using recycled egg cartons.

Paper or Plastic? Use cardboard and Styrofoam recycled egg cartons to demonstrate what happens to both in a landfill. Place a piece from each carton in water and soil put them in the window. Note any changes to each over time. Use this to explore biodegradable materials and renewable resources for Earth Month. Discuss how pollution is an environmental hazard and harms plants and animals.

Geology STEM science experiments for Earth Month: Use recycled egg cartons to classify and identify rocks and minerals. Here are free printable rock identification worksheets and online rock identification guides to help.. Students should label the sections of recycled egg cartons and sort by:

hardness on the MOHs scale here are free downloadable MOHs scale printables to help. 
rock type (metamorphic, sedimentary and igneous)
mineral composition (calcite, silicate, carbonate, etc.)
uses (building, abrasion, decoration, chemistry, etc.)

(MF-find tactile stem rocks or fidget stones for them to explore. They will enjoy exploring the safe, non-toxic toy animals too). Or reuse a large clear plastic container from the recycle bin and place various items inside, like a terrarium, for baby to study. 

Biology science games. Label the sections of recycled egg carton science crafts with taxonomy classification guide from the kingdoms (plantae, animalia, etc). Here are some more free printable animal classification activities too. Students might sort by subcategories KPCOFGS (kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species). Students cut pictures or make tiny cards with names of members of various groups. They sort pictures or words into categories. They can test each other in partners or in groups. Label the bottom of the egg carton with answers for self-checking. This can be adapted to any age or grade depending upon what you are studying. Animals classification is the perfect social studies-science cross-curricular activity! MF activities might include reading touch and feel or noisy books about animals. Max recommends the Jungly Tail Book with softie animals tails to explore. 

Systems science crafts. Most all science experiments are based on a system or cycle. Use recycled egg carton science crafts to make 3D flow charts, anchor charts, Venn diagrams or graphic organizers Places objects in each section to represent parts of the cycle and draw arrows to show how they interact. Demonstrate electrical current, the water cycle. food chains, human body systems, habitats, plant development and insect metamorphosis. Here are free printable charts and graphic organizers from enchanted learning. Graphic organizers make great cross-curricular lesson plans. 

Science Timelines. Use recycled egg cartons to demonstrate how things change and develop (or regress) over time. Make timelines of science inventions, transportation, etc. Use this with any area of science that you teach.

Respect Earth Month and make your STEM lesson plans POP! with hands-on science activities from your recycle bin.