This is such a fun idea to bring awareness to the world your child is living in.  It is inspired by a post I saw by Counting Coconuts called “Me On The Map.”  We chose to start with the big picture, the planet we live in and work our way to the more specific location of our home.  I will warn you that the preparation for the project is time-consuming, but it’s so worth it.

I started by finding clip art of the world, our continent, our country, our state and our city.  Some of the links to the clip art I found are at the bottom of this post under resources.  Then, I used a nesting bowl set to trace and cut gradually different sizes of circle out of construction paper.  Lastly, I cut labels out of white paper.  I wrote on Asher’s (3 yrs) set and left JR’s (5.5 yrs) set blank for him to write the labels himself.

To add a little bit of coloring fun, I asked the boys to color the continent we live in on the earth clip art, the country on the continent clip art and so on.  They chose to color North America orange to match our Montessori Map of the World.  This was the first project where Asher really worked hard to stay in the lines and he was very successful.

This was an extensive writing exercise for JR and I was very surprised to see him make it to the end of it.  I tried to break up the writing every once in a while with coloring so his brain could take a break.

The boys love their personalized books with their picture at the end.  It’s been a great way for them to visualize where they live on the planet earth.  Here’s what the books ended up looking like:

Other “Where I Live” or “Me On The Map” links from around the web:

• Me On The Map by Counting Coconuts.
• Where I Live Books by My Montessori Journey.
• Me On The Map – Free Printables by 2 Love Learning.

Resources: 

• Earth Clip Art:  http://sweetclipart.com/colorable-earth-line-art-709
• North America Clip Art: http://www.theodora.com/maps/new3/north_america_color.gif
• U.S.A. Clip Art: http://history.nd.gov/textbook/unit4_1_activity2.html
• Texas Clip Art: http://www.texaswines.net/texas_wines%20general%20p2.htm

***I printed all of the Clip Art Images at the 5×7 size on my printer.***

We have John Robert’s second soccer game tomorrow.  I’ll try to remember to take an Instagram for everyone that follows me on Instagram (I’m loriMOMents).  Have a great weekend!