Landforms & Water Bodies Activity

BUILD YOUR OWN

We had a geography class with some homeschooling friends. Alhumdolillah it was a lot of fun learning. Lil Muallim 2 was  the oldest in the group so I asked him to make a model for all the land forms and water bodies we had learnt. Once we discussed the terms and their features with all the kids all the kids made their versions, (with a little help from their moms)

Can find all these.......

LANDFORMS

island

archipelago

mountain

valley

hill

plateau

strait

gulf

cape

peninsula

WATER BODIES

lake

river

system of lakes

isthmus

sea

This ones Lil Muallimahs 

and the following ones are our friends......

LOVE EVERYONES MODELS...... So CUTE MASHALLAH!

Stitching the continents

STITCH AWAY

Looking through my drawers I came across these Africa dot to dot printouts that had come out on cardstock by mistake instead of regular paper. It hadn't occurred to me at that time but this time round I knew exactly what I wanted to do with them :):):)

Have my Lil Muallims stitch them...................! How cool is that ? Looks I will end up printing the other continents too on card stock. And to stitch them we will ofcourse keep up with our Montessori color theme yaaayyyy!!!

Sometimes I wonder do my kids really get as excited as myself ? Well I guess at least this time they will.......... hehe

I am going off to prepare the material let's see how they'll react....

They loved it .....

ALHUMDOLILLAH!!!!!

Sorry for the poor images..... will try and redo.

Tracing Maps

IMPROVISING MAP MAKING

Lil Muallim has been working with maps in Geography. Recently he's been making physical and political maps for different countries for each continent.  

I'm sure many have done this before but it was the first time in our house......What you may ask.......placing the sheets on top of each other and sticking them onto a window with removable tape!

EUREKA 

A pain staking activity just became a breeze! Alhumdolillah

Push Pinning Continents

PUNCHING OUT CONTINENTS

I loved this idea since I saw it on several Montessori blogs. I didn't have a big pricking tool or a fancy push pin, so I kept putting it off, until I had this Eureka moment and made my own push pins. Now why didn't I think of this before.... DUH!!

 I made our very own DIY push pins ready in less than ten minutes. I could not believe why I never thought of this before. I was not in favor of using the regular sized push pins. I could be wrong, but I thought the miniature sized ones were not only a safety hazard but would put too much strain on the hand on the lil ones.

Well here we are... our very own pushpins.... and cork board made by hot gluing two pieces of cork board  to make  a thicker surface for the pins to go through.

Lil Muallim # 2 sat and helped me make this as a wonderful assistant Mashallah. He even chose the colors.

He kept asking what they were for....and when I showed him , his eyes were gleaming with joy. 

To my utter surprise he loved this activity so much that he ended up punching out three Africas in one sitting!!!

Other helpful posts on Montessori Push Pinning continents can be read here (Montessori Print) and here (My Montessori Journey). 

More on making continent maps from the punched out parts can be seen here  (Moveable Alphabet) and here (My Montessori Journey)

Other related activities:

Coloring the large scale World Map

Flagging the continents

Shaping Continents

Continent Game

Continent Nomenclature Cards

Continent Tracing

Continent Dot to Dot

GUESS THE CONTINENT

I found these really neat printable at 100 day Activities. Lil Muallimah got the easier ones Lil Muallim # 2 got the harder ones. They both like there continent dot to dot sheets. 

I put Lil Muallimah ones in protective sheets and in a file to keep them safe and reusable.

Today I took Lil Muallimah's out of the file to see if she could recognize her continents without tracing them first. Mashallah she got them all right, as she named them ans explained her observation, why she thought it was that continent. She described how she knew, giving details of the shape and surrounding. I was very impressed. The nomenclature cards and her big map really helped Alhumdolillah

Here's what I mean

You've got to like the subtle element of Math (counting beyoind ten) while tracing the continents. Just the perfect out of the box Math activity Math on the Level style.

Before she can be done, she has to clean her tracings so there are no marks left on the protective sheet and pick up her cards.

:):):):):)

These were done very enthusiastically and with concentration with me beside her :)

Other related activities:

Coloring the large scale World Map

Flagging the continents

Shaping Continents

Continent Game

Continent Nomenclature Cards

Push Pinning Continents

Continent Nomenclature Cards

USING CONTINENT NOMENCLATURE CARDS  AND SOME EXTENSIONS

The more I do it , the more I love Montessori method. The fixed colors of continents make things so much simpler and understandable for young minds.

I found these FREE Continent Nomenclatures cards (in Montessori colors) at the Helpful Garden. I almost jumped out of my seat, because I just happened to find these just as I was thinking of making them by myself. 

I also found another free one here at Montessori helper.

ETC has excellent  ones too, but I prefer them for once the Continent recognition has been strengthened. These are like real pictures  of Earth.

Well back to our activity...... I cut and pasted our cards as soon as I had the printouts in my hand. Once done Lil Muallimah did this.....She used her big map for reference, Mashallah!

Next we played a few games of Twister as posted in my last post and then we did these extensions...

Continent Match up with picture cards

Continent Match up with name cards

We did another activity... Continent tracing that you can check out from the link below:

Continent Tracing

Other related activities:

Coloring the large scale World Map

Flagging the continents

Continent Shapes

Continent Game

Push Pinning Continents

Continent Game

CONTINENT FUN !

Right after Lil Muallimah finished coloring her World map, (see post here) we went upstairs to turn it into something cooler, our very own............

CONTINENT TWISTER

 We have played this way before two with the older ones, but those printed maps were played on and thrown after the wear and tear. This time I thought of sticking it onto a bristol board. Picking through our bristol boards in our stationary closet, I thought it would be much cooler if I stuck it onto blue bristol board. Now that way I wouldn`t have to colour in the continents, Phew! BUT......that meant I would have to cut around the continents. Sigh..... which I did but not around the smaller island parts.

I even made Antarctica from the left over cut out which was missing in the original map as Lil Muallimah pointed out.

Then I laminated it with shelf liner...

and we were all ready to play 

Right foot Asia , left foot North America

Right foot Africa , left foot South America.........

.....and Right hand Asia , left hand North America

Right foot Asia , left foot North America

Here she was giggling and asking me... could you please make it simpler now ! .....because she was getting all criss crossed ... hehe

 FUN FUN FUN

Other related activities:

Coloring the large scale World Map

Flagging the continents

Shaping Continents

Continent Nomenclature Cards

Continent Tracing

Push Pinning Continents

I've linked this up to 

Continent Shapes

I KNOW WHAT AFRICA LOOKS LIKE

In continuing our world map activities I asked Lil Muallimah which continent would she like to do first, and she chose Africa.

I gave her this printable I got from curriculum click, when it came as a freebie. You will notice her own Africa is spelled as "AfNicA" (hehe) because she had mistaken the lines of r and i as one letter making it n...,

I am totally fine with that, she will get it eventually :) If you look closely she even colored the lake in the middle, blue :) 

Then I asked her if she wanted to make it with  modelling clay ? And she said "YES!" So I grabbed her foam puzzle and we ran downstairs. 
I asked her to point out Africa on this foam puzzle I got from the $ store. (it doesn't have the same colors as Montessori maps, so ayounger child might get confused) Thankfully Lil Muallimah got it right but I do see the wisdom and benefit in the Montessori Maps.

Nonetheless the rest is pretty much clear through the pictures. She was quite enthusiastic throughout this activity and wanted to get it just right :)

the yellow tool actually came in a play dough set, my kids had got as a gift yeaaaaars ago :)

TAA  DAAAAA !!!

Don't you just love such multi level activities, encompassing, mapping, recognition, hand eye co-ordination, motor skills.....:):):):)

Other related activities:

Coloring the large scale World Map

Flagging the continents

Continent Game

Push Pinning Continents

Alhumdolillah !