Homemade Feltboard Geography

With our Social Studies and Geography Unit this year, I wanted a way for the girls to get a "hands on", Montessori-type feel to learning the continents and the oceans, but the Montessori geography puzzles are so expensive. We colored a basic map printout today, making each continent a different color, but they were not so thrilled with this. So, using an idea my dear friend came up with for the Toddler/Preschool Activity Bag Exchange that we did over the summer, I created a felt board puzzle of the continents.

The first thing I did was purchase pellon at the fabric store (around $5 total and there is some left).

Then put a foldout map of the world under the pellon and traced the continents with pencil. I went over the pencil with permanent marker. Once the world and continents were done, I used more pellon to trace another set of continents. I cut these out and colored them. Then I wrote the names of the continents and the oceans on little rectangles of pellon.

I haven't shown it to the girls yet, but I think it will hold their interest and help them to memorize the continents and oceans. This kind of "hands on" learning appeals to them. And it only took about an hour and 1/2 to make (I did it over 2 nights) and the cost was around $5.

The true test will come when I see how the girls react to it and how well they learn with it. I'll keep you posted.

TTFN

~Tina