Want a fun and effective way to teach students to understand different maps and their state in general? “Where in the World Are We?” is the perfect hands-on map activity for this exact purpose.

This trifold activity covers the following standards:

SS2G1 The student will locate major topographical features of Georgia and will describe how these features define Georgia’s surface.
a. Locate all the geographic regions of Georgia: Blue Ridge Mountains, Piedmont, Coastal Plain,  Valley and Ridge, and Appalachian Plateau.
b. Locate the major rivers: Ocmulgee, Oconee, Altamaha, Savannah, St. Mary’s, Chattahoochee, and Flint.

I made this trifold activity up a few years back, and it works really well to help students understand the difference between city, state, country, continent, etc. These are very hard concepts for young children to understand, in my experience. This trifold starts big and works down to the smaller, closer-to-home places. It is also a fabulous way to reinforce the compass rose and map key or legend.

 

Don’t forget to point out physical and political maps! One Georgia Standard is to locate regions of GA. Another is to locate major rivers in GA. To cover these, I have students make one more map on the back. I give them a map of GA that is split into the regions and we label Mountains, Piedmont, Coastal Plains, and Swamp. Then we use string to line the locations of the major rivers and label them.

 

If you need any of the map templates or words to glue on the map, leave a comment below.