Elias really enjoys geography lately. We have a big world map hanging in our living room, and he always wants to look at it together. He knows all of his continents. I want to start doing a little geography with him each day similar to the letter crafts and exercises I used to do with him. I also would like to help him with his fine motor skills and direction following a bit :). So….I combined all of those into one fun map art project.
I printed out a free blank map of the continents, and got out a box of crayons. Usually, Elias likes to scribble all over the page, not paying attention to any lines on there. Any attempt at getting him to color within the lines or drawing something more than just a scribble is met with resistance. So I wasn’t sure how this would go, but it actually went quite well!
I told Elias that he needed to color each continent a different color. I asked him to find a continent. (He picked South America first) Then I told him to choose a color (he chose pink) and to color only South America pink. We went through each continent that way. He even remembered Antarctica when it wasn’t even drawn on the map. Afterward, I labeled the map and hung it on the wall. He was very proud.
Then, I gave him another world map, and told him he could paint it however he wanted. He chose red:
What did Simon do while we were working on these art projects, you ask? Well…first he helped me reorganize my ziplocs:
Then I gave him a snack with which he trashed his shirt. But don’t worry, he helped clean up:
