Summer Vacation Maps
Are you planning your summer vacation? Or packed and ready to hit the highway? Let your students enjoy some map making skills and create a fun keepsake this summer.
Summer Vacation Maps
Print a black and white map of the USA (or country you will be visiting). Encourage your students to label the map of the places you will be traveling through. Then draw a line of your route through the states / country. As you drive along suggest your students add special landmarks, cities, rivers, mountains, etc. along your way. Color in bodies of water, railways, forests, and interesting terrain.
Older students can add historical landmarks and special events.
You do not have to make a cross country trip. Even if you stay in state and head to Grandma’s house, do something different and map a Summer Vacation Map.
Keep your map in a safe place. When you get home laminate their Summer Vacation maps! You’ll have a special reminder of the trip y’all took the Summer of 2016.
We flew to Washington DC, so I did not have my children create a fun map. However, when we got home we laminated all of our museum “tickets”, Metro passes, and some special things we picked up into a fun little poster. They even drew pictures of the Washington Monument and Capitol Building.
All of our family fun pictures are on Facebook and Instagram, which are not easy for little ones to look back and remember the exciting trip. Having these laminated “posters” or Summer Vacation Maps help spark conversations, geography lessons, and remind our children of the great times we have had together.
Read MoreCard Games Build Math Skills
We have always loved playing cards. Even more so when I know card games build math skills!
If your students are feeling a bit allergic to their math books change up the day and thrown down the playing cards. You can find many math skills in every common card game!
52 Pick Up – Counting
Go Fish – Matching
Solitaire – Number Sequence
Gin / Rummy – Matching, Adding, Subtracting
Black Jack – Adding, Subtracting
War – Greater Than Less Than Equal To
For a new spin on War, try our game, Addition War.
Watch our Hands-On Activities Video to see how to play the game by adding two cards to find the winner.
You can pick up a deck of cards just about anywhere! I especially like playing card games on vacation. The boys laugh we left our school books behind while I giggle they are still doing Math.
Tip: do not play cards when you are in a rush to do something else. When I get into a rush I usually add up points for my children and this completely defeats the purpose!
I have noticed my boys’ math skills are kept sharp when we are playing card games over the summer. We have far less “review” work to complete when we try to get back into the school groove after the summer.
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