Helping children understand grids starts of pretty easy in a classroom, you can play battleships and other simple exercises. But in this lesson, we look at different ways we can explore coordinates using the outdoors.
Create a Map
I often find that the children or all ages can have difficulty in mentally imaging the outdoor shape of a building or layout of streets and how they connect so it is well worthwhile taking them outdoors to explore this. Allow them time to explore and challenge them to really focus. Is the building a simple square? Do they streets run parallel to each other? Or are them angles, kinks and bends?
Give children squared paper and ask them to create a map, it can be as simple or as complicated as you like. It could be their home (or one floor) or the school, wherever works. It can be worth doing this outdoors to let them create it in situ but this can also be followed up indoors. If following up indoors we suggest allowing them to make notes and sketches when outdoors.
Once a map is created can they tell you where in the map you will be able to find the coordinates. Where is their favourite teddy or their house? How could they go from there to another point?
This takes the familiar indoor activity with a random map and makes it more meaningful to the children.
Older Children
Extend the map area, use their village or neighbourhood. Can they think about scale when creating their maps?
Younger Children
A room may be enough to challenge younger children. This means they can create their map with what they can see in front of them.