Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Geography Center info



After penning a lovely, long post noting all the areas for where I found the components, and what I did to create this-and then having it disappear into thin air-I am only going to post a quick link one instead.

Found the project board at Michaels (JoAnns in the past near school start up time) and see Target also carries them.

Velcro (need I say more?) black and white -dots are easier cuz you won't need to trim them, but not as economical Black goes on the board to fade away into the background better.  The white is for the stuff printed on the wht cardstock/paper.

Laminator-I have a Scotch from WalMart (cheapest place) but see KMart has cheaper (usually) laminator sheets (come in a 50 pk) but for the dollar or so difference-you'd eat that up in gas...so buy where you find em.
**Update: I forgot to note-you can make the pockets (which hold the goodies) with an empty lam. sheet ran thru the laminator. Cut to size, and use packing tape to secure to the sides/bottom.

Copy paper and card stock of your choice. I get mine at JoAnns (using the 40% coupon or when on sale).

Companies for materials:

Most of my maps are a part of the awesome Amy Pak kit called Olde World Map Pak (US and World included) which I wrote about in my review on my TOS blog-you can find that info here. Her site is Home School in the Woods, where she has tons and tons of great products to help you homeschool with pizazz! The Longitude/Latitude that is clipped together with a ring, the mini-map with the fishes attached, and the hemispheres section are all parts of a worksheet found under the World maps section.  I enlarged the lat./long. ones a tad to make those easier to read, prior to copying them off.


That is where I found the maps shown in the pictures, say for the world pic that I found (it is the one in the clear pocket under Long/Lat.) at ABCteach.  I also found the compass images there under the clip art. You do have to be a member to get those, but there are plenty of other sites where you can find these, you'll just have to hunt for them.

The maps are ones we found in our National Geographic pile.  They are most likely not super updated, but alas-they will do.

All the words (on the section for the reference point, all other labels) are done in MS Word.  I have lots of these uploaded on my Scribd page.  Look for the icon in the right-hand side of my blog, to get there. The ocean info is something you can type up as needed.  I just Googled the info, then typed out the important stuff.  Each continent will get some info like that too.

All of this is Velcro'd on, so that when I need to change maps-it is easy as pie.  I also have a long strip of Velcro running along the bottom of the map pocket and up the sides to give it super strength to hold those heavy maps.

The fish are a part of a little container I found at the Dollar Tree.  It had stars, turtles and other sea critters in it.  I will have turtles for the continent finding.  Simple Velcro a tiny piece to the back of em, so they can be stuck on.

Lastly, the little compasses.  Well I had those from a kit I got free last summer (some science place had those available) but do not recall who it was.  Anyhoo-you can find cheap compasses at the dollar store.  Just strap or Velcro them on for the kids to use on their excursions.

I think I got em all listed.  Use what you have to save $$, look for free downloads first. Since our geography is on going-we will have this for a long, long time.  Once done with the world geo...we'll go into the states.  So we will have a whole new slew of things for that.

HTH

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