Cycle 2 - Pin Maps!

We started pin maps last year and we're addicted now!  We love them.  It is so fun to week by week, place pins in the locations you are learning and fill in passports as you "travel" to each new country.  My daughter loves them and it adds a great fun dimension to learning our Classical Conversations® geography memory work each week!

I feel like we don't focus enough on geography in our country.  So many kids don't know where half of the places in the world are or even the continent they might be on.  I guess in America when we call the "World Series" a baseball game among various States - it sort of says it all about our USA centered mentality.  I want to change that perception for my children and have them see themselves as a part of a larger picture of God's created world and order.

The supplies you need are: Engineering copy of the Cycle 2 maps in the back of the Foundations Guide 4th Edition, cork board (found mine at Walmart for $9), T-pins (can get those at any office supply store), print out of the locations/maps, scissors, laminator, mini rubber bands (like for hair), hot glue gun and index card box or pencil supply box.

After cutting the Pin Map document I next laminated them all.

After that, they were ready to be cut up so I could glue them to their T-pins.

Then I took my glue gun and hot glued each laminated label to a T-pin. 

Once they were glued then I began to order them according to the geography memory work.

As I gathered the weeks I would rubber band them together by week so they'd be easy to locate as each week came.

Then I put my Cycle 2 Maps on the cork boards and hung them on my wall.

 To add some additional dimension to our pinning, I printed out and quickly made a "passport" book.  You can download one from http://www.donnaward.net/PDF/Play_Passport_USA_small.pdf or http://www.startwithabook.org/content/pdfs/Passport.pdf  - I changed the type passport I used this year to differentiate from Cycle 1.  On the Pin Map document that I make, it has larger flags with labels for each country that are meant to be cut out and placed in the child's passport as a "stamp" for each country they learn/"visit".

We get especially silly when we do ours.  We have a "customs" table that my daughter has to present her passport to for inspection.  Depending on the country I will talk with an appropriate accent and if it's a Communist country for example, I might be "suspicious" of her passport and ask her the intention of her "visit" in my country. We have fun role playing and it really makes it memorable for her.  It's a fun part of our week together in school.

In all, I'd say it will take you about 2 hours to do all 24 weeks of pins so they are ready to be pinned each week.  If you just do 12 weeks at a time then it would be less.  I did them all at once just to have them done and enjoy the school year with them!

Here are our completed Cycle 1 Maps from last year that we pinned!

If you'd like to do the Pin Maps but don't want to purchase the Teaching Plan - I'm now offering them for a separate purchase!  I think it's a great way to add fun to your Geography!