I got the idea for this activity from Kindergarten Corps and students loved making these! They were still very interested in creating their own maps, so we made an invitation to create maps and communities.
Students were free to create their own maps and communities. I simply typed each location into Google Maps and printed out the satellite picture (I also had the map view, which is not pictured). We tied that into our learning about communities by having maps of different places in their community (we had the school, hospital, movie theater, park, fire house and sports complex).
Students were also very interested in creating maps. We recorded what they said about each of their buildings and added quotes to them. They also had fun creating a background on a large piece of paper. Then students had a chance to create their own paper bag buildings to add to our classroom community. We began by discussing the different places we would find in our community and why they are important.
This past week we have been discussing what belonging to a community means, what communities we belong to (families, class/school, neighbourhoods, sports teams), and the people and places within these communities.
