How to Make Distance Learning Fun with Maps

Social Studies can be tricky.

Especially for your primary students. Maps for primary students can be a very complex topic, and distance learning with maps can be even trickier, so we are here to make your life just a little bit simpler.

Distance Learning with maps:

Step 1: Read about maps

This is a great book to teach maps. Who doesn’t love Reading Rainbow?

Step 2: Sing about maps

If you have never used music to teach a lesson, this is a total game changer!

1. Listen to a song on maps. Ours is only $1. Buy it here!
2. Have a lyric sheet ready to look over with your students. Talk about the words and what they mean. What can we learn from these words?
3. Sing the song again.
4. Ask if students noticed anything new.

Distance learning maps tip #1: Have your students listen to the song, then respond to some questions on Peardeck or other interactive platforms.

Step 3: Create using maps

Have your students create classroom maps. Encourage them to use the maps vocabulary as they are creating.

Pam heard conversations between her students about where the North, South, East, and West sides were in the room. One girl commented on how catchy the maps song was! Below are some pictures:

Above, one of Pam’s students is pointing to the North side of the room.

This friend is working on his legend.

Distance learning maps tip #2: Encourage students to make a map of their bedroom, house or neighborhood.

Step 4: Read and sing about maps

This step is very near and dear to our hearts! We have a maps emergent reader that is awesome! It has so many great features to reinforce phonics and vocabulary. Check it out below!

Here’s what you will find with all of our Emergent Readers!

1. PDF with color and BW pages
2. A real photo for every vocabulary word
3. 5-6 words centered on the theme of the book
4. A familiar piggy-back tune to help students sing and read at the same time
5. A literacy enrichment box on each page to practice phonics concepts like beginning sound, blend, digraph, etc.
6. Comprehension questions at the end
7. A comprehensive teaching guide to show you every step of the way!

Check out all of our Emergent Readers here!

If you want to go digital, we’re on Boom Learning! Enjoy many of the same Emergent Reader features with a bonus recording of each song.

Distance learning maps tip #3:  These are self-checking and paperless. No wasted ink and no keeping track of progress on paper! Perfect for a blended learning classroom as well.

Click below to see more:

We just bundled these two resources together with our fun Maps and Globes song at a discount! Click Here to see more!

Read how I used these readers with my daughter during Distance Learning!

We hope you will find these great tips useful for teaching maps and many other concepts to your learners. Have a great day!

Brittany and Pam