Resources
We read a small amount of information from our Homeschool in the Woods curriculum but got most of our information from our core book – Charting the World by Richard Panchyk:
Vocabulary to Learn
Most of these words the older children had been exposed to before and were therefore familiar with. The goal of this quick lesson was to consolidate previous knowledge and by doing something hands on, help them never to forget.
earth’s axis – imaginary line which passes north/south through the center of earth, around which our planet spins
earth’s poles – two extreme ends of the axis
equator – the line that divides the earth in two halves (northern hemisphere/ southern hemisphere)
Tropic of cancer / tropic of Capricorn run parallel to the equator each exactly 231/2 degrees away from it
The polar circles (arctic and antarctic) also run parallel to the equator at 66 degrees and 33 minutes
The prime meridian is an invisible line which passes through the two poles and divides the earth into eastern and western Hemispheres
Longitude is the distance from the prime meridian, measured in degrees
Latitude is the distance from the equator to either of the poles
Compass rose – showing north, south, east and west
Looking for the poles and parallels on our map
First the children had a good look for everything we had read about on our wall map. They found everything apart from the Prime Meridian. They all made a note of which countries/ continents each of the lines went through:
Marking them on our own home made map
Once back at our home-made map we marked out using string the (very) approximate position of each:


And then the children took it in turns, using a marker, to dot the lines onto the map:
I photocopied a compass rose and A6 stuck it in the corner of the map, showing north, south, east and west (more for the benefit of my little ones):
Our map
Here is how our map looked at the end of this lesson:
This was such a fantastic way of learning and retaining information. By physically adding all these ‘invisible’ lines the children had to look them up on our big map, research which countries they went through, make sure they had the right line with the right name. They also realised how (in)accurate our home made map was. In fact T had to make the Prime Meridian slightly skew to make it intersect the right countries!
Next we will start to mark some of the routes taken by explorers we are currently studying.
Very cool way to mark those lines. The wool with the little dots is a neat trick 🙂 This sounds like this was a great hands-on lesson.
Thanks Rebecca. So long as they remember it….
I imagine that the large size of the map made this a activity both work better and more fun than a small map. I especially like the part where they learned that their map was less than perfect. Acurate maps are hard to make.
It is really good to be working with such a large map, although storing it is a bit of a problem! I have lots of plans to use it with both big and little children so hopefully it will be worth the inconvenience in the end!
Great work. They will surely remember everything they learned doing this project. Love your map.
Thank you Donna!
What a great idea to use the wool – I just love your gigantic map.
Thank you Marie
Learning by doing, I love it!
Thanks Karin.
I can just imagine how much most of my hand drawn maps would be off. Great activity! la de da, adding more in so comment will post.
Are you still having trouble posting comments? I’m sorry Ticia, I don’t know what to do about it. Thank you for persevering though, I love to hear from you!
Love all the posts about this study. Such creativity!
Thank you so much Elizabeth.