Outdoor Geography

Can you identify a state or country from its outline? Are you able to fit the states or provinces of your country together? Try it outdoors—on a giant, colorful map!

• 1.

  What is your state or country’s shape? Does it have a distinctive border or an unusual shoreline? Do you know where key areas are located? Can you identify where you live?

• 2.

  Ask your teacher to help you find a safe, large area outside to draw your map. Start by drawing your state or other area that you are studying with Crayola Giant Sidewalk Chalk. Fill the space with color.

• 3.

  Ask a classmate to draw and color a bordering geographic area with a different color.

• 4.

  Continue mapping and filling the regions with color. See how much of the country or world you can draw from memory. Look at an atlas to check on details.

• 5.

  Can your classmates identify the geographic area you created? Add visual clues or words if necessary until they figure out what you drew.

Benefits

• Students identify geographic outlines.
• Students demonstrate the ability to connected related geographic areas.
• Students visually depict borders and land masses by color coding them.

Adaptations

• What are some of the reasons why countries, provinces, and states are shaped the way they are? Find out how borders were created.
• Discuss why it is important to recognize geographic shapes without words or other identifying marks.
• Start a graph of names of states and countries that are shaped like other things. For example, some people the country of Italy resembles a boot.
• Assessment: Are student’s outlines accurate? Could students identify neighboring areas? Were the maps color coded?