MAP QUEST

BY KRIS EATON

The kindergarten class has been immersed in a new unit of study called, “Where I live.” Several aspects of STEAM were woven throughout the projects and discoveries. We started by finding their houses on Google Earth - typing in their home addresses and finding a picture of their residence. We continued the study by learning the names of their street, city, and state.

The project has expanded to learning more city names, whether their friends live in apartments or houses, and how to find directions from one house to another using the Google Maps app. We also studied how to sign “left, right, and forward,” and then planned out a route from their house to a friend’s house. The students were fascinated to see who lived close by, while other friends lived much further away in another city.

The students are working on two final projects related to this unit. The first project is making a city/country map that connects all our homes by roads, trains, or walking paths. Students have added their homes, street signs, bridges, trees, rivers, and grass.

The second project has students creating individual books about where they live by including descriptions about their house, bedroom, street, and city name; adding the country name and Earth. Students wrote sentences connected to the picture and then gave an ASL description about each page. We typed up their stories, and are excited to turn them into books they can take home!