Cartography in the School House

Younger Years

Early on in our home educating journey, I learned about the importance of cartography (studying and drawing maps). My own geography was a bit rusty when we began homeschooling, so I was eager to bridge that gap and learn alongside my children. We started with the basics: we learned to identify the continents, oceans, five circles of latitude, and some markings on the globe. We then transitioned to “blobbing maps”. This technique involves teaching your child to draw simple, rough shapes or “blobs” on a piece of paper to represent the continents. To make this a quick daily habit, I laminated white sheets of paper with the Equator and Prime Meridian already marked and got the children to draw on them every day. It only took a few minutes to complete.

This was a brilliant introduction for my children when they were young because it gave them an overview of the map of the world and spatial awareness – a general idea of where the continents, borders, and oceans sit in relation to one another.

Draw the World Series

Once they had mastered these blob maps, we moved on to the fantastic “Draw the World” series by Kirsten J. Daeger. Over the years we have done the following:

1. Draw the World
2. Draw Mexico and South America
3. Draw Europe
4. Draw North America
5. Draw Oceania
6. Draw Africa
7. Draw Canada and Greenland
8. Draw Asia 1
9. Draw Asia 2 (we are currently working on this)
10. Draw Antarctica (I just saw this on Amazon today!)

Working through this series with the children has been an incredible experience. Each book teaches you how to draw all the countries and borders within that continent in a clear, step-by-step manner. We typically tackle 2 pages a day, always beginning our next session by reviewing what we’ve already mastered.

The books have many funny and quirky notes such as “the UK looks like a slug travelling eastward”, “Togo is straight like a pogo stick” or “the western border of China looks like a bear with his mouth open”, etc which has proven surprisingly effective at helping us memorise country shapes and locations.

We moved through this series at a steady, almost daily pace for years and now that we are nearing the end, my focus is on long-term retention. To ensure that they don’t forget what we’ve worked so hard to learn, I’ve started this review system:

1. Memory Drawing: Once a week, the children are tasked with drawing everything from a specific book in the series FROM MEMORY.
   
2. Self-correction: They (along with me) identify and correct their own mistakes, then try again the following week to improve.
   
3. The Monthly Team Challenge: At the end of each month, everyone gathers at our big whiteboard for a collaborative session to draw from memory and showcase what they have mastered.

This week the kids tackled drawing the entire world map, followed by detailed renderings of Mexico and South America (we are reviewing the first 2 books at present). Part of getting them to draw the map together was that the whiteboard session served as a lesson in teamwork and humility. They had to collaborate, offer help when needed, and learn to defer to whoever was best at drawing a particular region. I’m also hoping that they will learn from each other in the process.

We plan to continue these monthly reviews along with the whiteboard drawings until we can confidently recreate the entire world map from memory!

Memoria Press Geography

We’ve also been enjoying the MP Geography series. I like that they give you the backstory on each country before diving into what life is like there today. We also learn capitals, flags, local languages, and other fascinating facts. I particularly value how MP teaches Geography in context – connecting a country’s ancient history and name with its modern-day identity.

Previously I would read about places like Moab and Ammon without a clear sense of their modern-day equivalent or exact locations. However, by integrating MP Geography along with Christian Studies map work, as well as our own efforts in drawing the world map, we are slowly piecing it all together. I feel like our understanding of the world is being transformed!

Take Middle East for instance: Through Draw the World we are learning how to draw the region’s borders, countries and water forms from memory. But thanks to MP Geography and Christian Studies, we actually know some of the stories and key facts behind those lines on the map! It actually makes drawing maps so much more meaningful!      

We decided to record this week’s drawing on the whiteboard in fast mode. Here is the video – excuse the 4-year-old munchkin photo-bombing the video!

Finally, a few pictures of this week:

The kids have been experimenting with taking slow motion pictures. Here is a selection of funny ones: