Every toddler knows that a dog goes “woof,” that a frog says, “ribbit,” and a lion roars. But do they know where lions live? In addition to teaching kids shapes, colors, animals, and sounds, it’s very simple to add geography. This easy addition to what you are already helping your children learn will give them a head start in school, and in a greater understanding of the world around them.
Whether you are homeschooling or simply supplementing the teaching your child is getting at school, there are plenty of websites that can help you with ideas on how to teach them. Some of these are sites specifically created with teaching in mind, and some are ancillary websites for educational organizations that seek to assist in the dissemination of the information they are providing by synthesizing it for parents and teachers. The following tips will help get you started with the basics.
Animals Sounds
Often, young children learn other information, such as colors, or maybe numbers, through the aid of animals. A dog is brown, a chick is yellow, a frog is green. How many cats are there in the picture? In addition to using animals to teach these, children learn about the animals themselves. What does a sheep say? “Baaaaaaaa.” What about a wolf? “Howwwwwl.” They learn that one of these lives on a farm, and one in the forest. We’re already teaching all of these things, so why not add more precise information to the mix?
What colors are a toucan? And where does it live? You can select a specific country or habitat, and teach your children several animals that live there. A chimpanzee is brown. He says, “oooohh oooohh aaaaahh aaaaahh,” He lives in the rainforest, which is in Africa. Pandas are black and white, they live in Asia. If you consider how much information we are already instilling in our children surrounding animals, adding the geography part doesn’t seem like a stretch.
Add a Map
Give children access to a globe or map, and whenever animals are discussed, look at a map together. You could hang a large map on a wall, or use a globe if you don’t have the wall space. Whenever you talk about, read about, or watch animals on television, refer together to the map, finding the locations together. This will help children put together these disparate locations in their minds, making spatial associations.
You could even cut out animal shapes and place them onto the map in their proper locations, or use animal shapes to start discussions about these places. Looking at a map helps children to understand where they are in relation to other countries. Use maps to see where friends live, where grandparents are traveling to, or where your great grandparents emigrated from.
Make Connections
When you talk about one animal living in a specific place, talk about another animal that lives there, making connections for your children. It’s important to make connections for children from a young age, and as they get older, you can expand on the information you talk about when you explore geography. As children begin to learn the capital cities of their own country, they can also begin to learn the capital cities of countries around the world.
When people learn about other countries, they learn about the world around them. It makes the vast world a smaller, less overwhelming place, the more you know about it. Learning about other countries and other cultures helps children to grow into more tolerant adults who understand that cultural differences are normal, and not negative or strange. All of this can begin by adding one bit of information to the already oft-asked question, “what does a lion say?”
Credits:
Article contributed by Karoline Gore.
Photo by Lonely Planet on Unsplash
Photo by Juliana Kozoski on Unsplash
