Friday Do-Over: Mapping Destinations

Spring is here! Start planning your neighborhood and city excursions by having your kid decide the routes you will take! First published 4/29/09

Kiddo and I took our street map to the local office supply store and made a set of enlargements. Copiers are good fun for kids, btw.
When we got home I asked Kiddo to find our home on the map, and the day's destination. He did this with ease, not surprisingly, and then he drew the route on the map. He liked this so much he asked for more destinations and drew those routes, too, using different colored pencils.

Reading Assignment:
This is Me and Where I Am. This book starts with the world and zooms closer and closer in on a child in his bedroom and then like a camera's wide angle lens, the locations reverse. Although not about maps, per se, I think it helped Kiddo with the concept of maps.

Are We There Yet, Daddy? This book combines 3 of Kiddo's great loves: maps, transportation and numbers. What is really nice about this book is that the map is not just located on the end papers, like a lot of books about travel, but each page has a map insert showing where the boy and his dad are along the route of their journey, and how many miles are left. I have now read this book a gazillion times.

Mapping Penny's World. I would have liked to read this book in conjunction with Map Activities, part 1, but better late than never. An excellent demonstration of how to read maps and especially map keys and symbols.

I would like to read As The Crow Flies, but our library doesn't own it.