Learning With The Little Man in the Map: Part 3

I was recently given The Little Man in the Map by E. Andrew Martonyi for review at The Curriculum Choice and my kids are loving it! This is, by far, the best strategy I have seen to help kids learn how to recognize the States on a map. I am planning to share with you our learning and progression as we explore United States geography with MIM (Man In the Map) and this is part 3. We hope to share with you a video of us recognizing all of the States at the end of our unit with this awesome book.

To see Part 1, please visit this link.
To see Part 2, please visit this link.

What we love about The Little Man in the Map is that the book breaks learning to recognize the states on a map into regions. The regions that are taught in the book are:

Midwestern States

South Central States

Southeastern States

Northeastern States

Western States

The Snails are currently learning all of the Midwest States. They are getting pretty good at recognizing the Little Man in the Map (MIM), Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana when using the map that goes with the book. The Snails are still unable to recognize the States without the contextual clues...they can't do it on a plain map. Which is okay with us...we've only been at this a few weeks. We learn at a Snail's pace because we really want to gain true understandings in all that we learn. We really want to be able to learn this skill for life!

For this weeks activity, we made what The Snails call a "map pillow." I printed a beautiful map of Arkansas from The National Atlas. If you follow Charlotte Mason style of learning, you are going to love the beauty of these maps. Also, you can customize your own map and print out crazy maps like vegetation, volcanoes, political, and tons more! I love, love, love this site!

To make the "map pillows," I printed one map on card stock. To save ink, the back side is plain. First, Big Snail cut it out. I helped him so that there would be a border around the edge. Then, Big Snail used my tiny hole puncher to punch little holes all around the edge. This is a marvelous way to build the muscles in your child's hand, by the way. Next, I gave him some needle and thread and he "sewed it up." He then stuffed it with newspaper and sewed up the rest of it.


We also played some games at Sheppard Software. There is a large variety of good games on U.S. geography for different levels of play. The only thing we don't like about this site is that it is NOT ad free.

Stay tuned for next week as we share more U.S. Geography activities to do with The Little Man in the Map.

Get the book today in my store (click on the "Get Smart" owl, then click on the "Man in the Map" category) and learn with us! We will be doing a weekly post featuring this book and U.S. geography activities for little kids. If your homeschool is on vacation, you *HAVE* to add this to your list for next year! I PROMISE you will love it!