Me on the Map

The end of the year was an absolutely perfect time for our Me on the Map unit.  It got the kids up, moving and engaged in some fun and meaningful activities!

And I got to make some pretty beautiful anchor charts...which is always a win for me! :)

We spent the last few weeks of school studying Arkansas history and our state symbols.  We started by reading Me on the Map and talking about what our map would look like.  We charted our maps from big to small together...

Then, we used a little total physical response to give my firsties a better visual on how the size of the places we live are related.  They *loved* this chant!  I even challenged them to find out their address if they didn't already know it so they could do a complete me on the map chant--and I had a TON of kids come back the next morning showing me their personal chant including their addresses!  I love it when kids get excited a motivated to learn more on their own!

For almost all of my integrated units, I like to have an ongoing project to carry us through the unit and help us record our new learning.  We made mini me on the map anchor charts for each kiddo.  We began researching the places we live started with our biggest place {Earth} to our smallest {our house}.  We spent a day or two on each place--except for our state which we studies for much longer with our Arkansas History Unit. We read pebble go articles {they have some GREAT articles on me and my world that connect super well with Me on the Map!} during readers' workshop.

On days we had time, we wrote about what we learned during writers' workshop...just keepin' it real...it gets *hard* to find time for everything at the end of the year, doesn't it??

And during our snack time--which was also my science and social studies time because time was just that crunched!--we completed our me on the map chart page for the place we researched and wrote about.

The kids adored this project.  And they loved continuing it a little bit at a time throughout our unit.  They colored the map for that day and wrote the name of our "place."

Then, added a star sticker to where we are on the map.

To finish assembling the flipbook, simply stack all the circles as shown below and staple it at the top.  You can prep them by stapling before hand and have the kids fill out the appropriate circle each day!

And here are a few imperfect real pictures of our city and house maps, which we didn't add stars to just because I thought it'd be hard to figure out where each house was in our city.  I do wish we had added a star to map our school on the city map though! #nexttime

I used a "blank" (for the most part) version of this me on the map flip chart because, honestly, I needed some extra time to do end of year assessments and the blanker it was, the more time it would take! Again, just #keepinitreal.  But there is also a "cuter" version of the same flipchart that kids could definitely finish a lot faster if you are crunched for time... ;)

All of these activities, plus many more I'll be blogging about soon can be found in my Me on the Map Mini Unit and my Arkansas History unit.  I already have several requests for other units based on different states and I'll be working to add those to my store as well.  If you have a custom request for this unit or others, you can send me an email at thefirstgraderoundup@gmail.com and I'll be happy to work on it.  Follow my store to be the first to know when these packets are released!