Mapping Activities

Hello everyone:

I wanted to share with you some of the fun Mapping Activities the 6th and 7th graders played at last week :)

The 6th graders visited the elementary playground with the assignment to draw a map of it, including legend, scale, and all pertinent elements. They worked in groups of 3, and found scale the hardest thing to achieve:








Measuring scale using their own feet...some found it easier to use their body length instead.







The 7th graders worked on maps as well, although they have moved on from creating maps to studying the many types and intricacies of map projections. They created three types of map projections: interrupted (using tronjas), polar, and cylindrical (using pop bottles):





Drawing the "maps" on the tronjas...

Interrupted Map

Cutting the pop bottles and contemplating the earth and how to best draw it on the bottom of the pop bottle

Apparently I didn't take pictures of the cylindrical maps, but they were achieved by taping tracing paper around the length of the pop bottle and shining the light through the map a second time. It was great fun, and I THINK they learned a lot...time (and the 7th graders' quiz from the weekend) well tell :)

KF