If there’s one subject I love, it’s Geography. I’ve been working on putting together a few Geography materials for Pumpkin 1 and I’m enjoying it so much. One big project is the Continent Boxes. These are boxes (or files) for each continent that contain things about that continent in the form of pictures, flags, objects, maps, stories, money, etc… It’s so fun to do. But it’s also a lot of work.
This weekend I worked on making the Sandpaper Land form cards. This was something I’d been planning to make for a while but hadn’t gotten around to it. They’re easy to do and very inexpensive.
First off I wanted them to be durable. So I thought I’d laminate blue card stock squares first. I then cut the land form shapes out of fine sandpaper. Can I just say, I’m glad I didn’t attempt to make my own sandpaper letters. Cutting sandpaper is like nails on a chalkboard, *shudder*, very unpleasant to do. I used the masters from Montessori Print shop because I was also using the cards from there so I wanted everything to match. After I cut them out I glued them to the laminated cards using Modge Podge and put heavy books on top and left them overnight to dry. I wasn’t sure if the Modge Podge would hold, but it did beautifully.
I was so excited to present them to Pumpkin 1. I started off with the land form trays we have from Affordable Montessori. Pumpkin 1 really likes those. I got out the island tray and the lake tray because those are the simplest. We poured blue coloured water in them. She’s played with them before but I haven’t given her the names for them yet. I did a 3 period lesson to teach her the names of island and lake. Then I introduced the matching sandpaper cards and had her match them to the trays. Next I brought out the green and blue land form cards and had her match them to the others.
I also got out the sandpaper globe and we looked for islands and lakes on it. Then she wanted the coloured globe as well.
She was really enjoying this activity so I introduced two more land forms – bay and cape. I really should have done peninsula and gulf because bay and cape are just variations of those, but I didn’t realize that at the time and bay and cape seemed more simple. But, hey, I’m learning so much teaching her!
The next day we did the activity again, and she remembered all the names. This time I introduced another set of cards. The photos of actual land forms. These were a little tricky, especially bay and cape because the cape had a bay beside it, but I think it’s important for her to have a visual of the real thing to apply it to real life.
Now to finish up my big projects on the go – the continent boxes, and the felt world wall map.
Pumpkins and Me 
When it comes to Geography I’m learning right along with my 3yo too! Before these lessons, I could not have described the difference between cape & peninsula and I don’t think I would have recognized that all these land & water forms are just the reverse of each other. And this lesson is so much fun to do!