Hands On Geography for Multiple Ages

The last few weeks we’ve been heavily hands on geography. What we found out is that when you actually make a model of something you have to pay attention to its qualities. The details. The boundaries and borders.

These hands on geography activities also help the child see the big picture. To think of the Creator. Sometimes, a hands on geography project helps children to fix a portion of the history timeline in their minds.

This is a rather long post because I share our adventures from the last few weeks – for our age range of children from four to 15. Really, each of these hands on geography projects could be a separate post but I wanted you to see how all of these work with multiple ages. I hope these examples will give you some ideas, options, layers and levels of studies for fun geography and history learning in your home. First of all…

Tips for Messy Activities: How to Make Hands on Geography Work for Multiple Ages

Hands on geography projects can be messy. Ok, they are messy. Often that is what children love about learning. And often hands on learning sparks the joy needed for further independent study. Just a little paint on a continent prompts a child to linger on Japan. Forming a mountain peak or drawing the line of a river opens up discussion of native Americans and how they taught those early Pilgrims survival tactics.

I tend to group all the messy fun together. When we painted our salt dough map, each child took a  turn. While the paints were out, the younger ones painted pictures just for fun. We also mixed up the goopy, messy ‘glue’ for our paper mache globe. It was all out at once and then was all cleaned up at once.

Maybe while an older one is painting, younger ones can be putting together a geography puzzle. Each can take a turn, pick a state, pick a continent. Contributing and adding a piece to the overall big picture of this world God made for us.

Using Ann Voskamp’s A Child’s Geography for Homeschool Geography

My children have been in heaven making the earth! A resource we’ve had for a while but have just this year really delved into is A Child’s Geography (Daniele’s review). I’ve been pleased with how well the reading fits into our One More Thing After Lunch habit.

The information is challenging enough for my older ones to think on. And the hands on geography activities are engaging for my younger ones – well, for all.

One of the first exercises we did was sort of a Me on the Map type activity. Each child was to draw themselves in the center of the paper, then a house around themselves, then the street they live on, a road, a city, state, country, world… This activity gave us a wonderful perspective on just how small we really are and just how great our God is!

Our times with A Child’s Geography are giving us a really great tour of our Earth. So far we have toured our atmosphere, learning about each layer and its qualities.

Hands On Geography: Paper Mache Globe Homeschool Activity

And, we have made an earth! Following directions in the book, we used a balloon to make a paper mache globe. You can also follow the simple directions at the Crafty Classroom. This absolutely messy project made a treasure for all time. Only two of my five were willing to put their hands in the ‘glue’ and wrap a balloon in paper. But all took a chunk of the world to recreate. Each looked at a globe and copied a continent, paying attention to features, scale and more.

Hands On Geography: Making Salt Dough Maps

The 13 Colonies. One of the wonderful homeschool learning tools Tapestry of Grace offers is arts and activities. Every year we make a salt dough map of some kind. We’ve made a salt dough map of an imaginary land and sculpted a map of Italy. This year, along with our study of the 1600s, we created a salt dough map of the 13 colonies. It’s continuing hands on geography.

Using a simple salt dough recipe from Cooks.com, a link offered in the resources on the Tapestry of Grace site, we made our dough. From the start we decided that each child could be in charge of a few colonies. First, I found a piece of discarded cardboard. I opened it up so it would be a flat surface starting point.

Little guy is just enjoying the paints. You could also let your youngest ones have their very own pieces of salt dough. Youngest girl wanted to make some islands. So she shaped them on a paper plate, let them dry for about a week and then painted them any way she liked.

We sketched off the map, noting how small our Georgia was. And as we placed the salt dough over our sketched map, we noted that the western border of the new colonies just might have stopped at the Blue Ridge Mountains. Made perfect sense though it’s not something we read in our assignments.

This time our dough was thin enough to dry in just about a day. So, gathering our acrylic and tempura paints we painted the colonies, Spanish Florida, the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. We noted the borders of each colony.

All that is left is to label each state. We also thought that with the empty, open ‘west’ of our map, we would list some facts we’ve learned. Make a display board of it.

More Salt Dough Map Homeschool Activities

• Our imaginary land salt dough map
• Our Italy salt dough map

13 Colonies Art Lesson

13 Colonies Lesson Plan for Creative Kids – Erin shares, “Like many children, my son is a hands-on visual learner. He enjoys his studies and retains more knowledge when there are hands-on and creative components to his lessons. That is one of the reasons Nana’s chalk pastel lessons have been a vital and thriving part of our homeschool for many years! Learning about the 13 Colonies was no different. Though we read books and watched documentaries, the hands-on art of Nana’s 13 Colonies chalk pastel lesson solidified his understanding!”

Our World Geography Plans for High School

Our older children are also taking a tour of the world, week by week and country by country. We’ll be using internet links, Netflix selections, Google Earth, notebooking, geography spines, puzzles and more to learn more about the countries of our world.

It’s looking like puzzles will be the big hands on geography portion for my older students. Though I am sure these world geography studies will match up with more Tapestry of Grace mapping and arts and activities projects.

More Hands On Geography Fun for You

• Me on the Map – an art unit study with Nana for You ARE an Artist Clubhouse members

• Maps Video Art Lessons in the Artist Clubhouse
• How to make Nana’s apple pie and see the world (layers and levels of unit studies with FIAR How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World – with Nana’s apple pie recipe – beautifully illustrated by Nana and FREE download HERE)
• The Best Geography Games for Your Homeschool
• Annie Kate’s geography reviews at Curriculum Choice: Geography songs and Seterra

• Maps as window treatments in our homeschool room
• Stack the States app review by Hodgepodgedad
• my History/Geography Pinterest Board – there are so many great resources pinned here from some wonderful, fellow homeschool moms. The Ultimate Guide to Homeschool Geography, free geography printables
• my Marvelous Maps Pinterest Board

I’ll be back next week with a more ‘regular’ sort of homeschool wrap up – which may or may not include pond scum…Wrapping up these few weeks of hands on geography projects. 

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first published September 2012 and updated 2024