You Can Go Anywhere … with a Map: A Study of Maps

map_boat

By Parul Chandra, Head Teacher

Children learn by using their senses to investigate the world around them. Through these investigations, they learn how things work and why things happen. One such investigation started last December when a section of our classroom yard was closed off with yellow caution tape to let the newly planted grass flourish. Accessing the sand area and the grove area, which are on opposite ends of the half-acre play yard, was not as simple as before. Teachers in Center AM used this real-life situation as an impetus to spur new ideas from the children about how to navigate the cordoned-off yard as well as an opportunity to stimulate their awareness and enable them to develop creativity and flexibility in thinking and planning.

Driven by the need to be problem-solvers, many children started drawing paths that one could take to access the yard without hurting the baby grass. We set up a mapmaking table, and soon many children were invested in creating their own maps of the yard and sharing them with others to show them the way.

Limited access to the yard was the catalyst that launched us into our map project. Drawings that emerged made us curious about the children’s understanding of the event. We would ask questions and document the children’s words on the drawings. These representations from the 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds revealed the cognitive process they undergo to represent what is on their minds.

child drawing

Our children had prior experience with viewing teacher-made maps of both the indoor and outdoor areas of the classroom. We had seen children use these maps in their dramatic play by following the maps and by creating a script for their play around them. Now, children were creating their own maps and testing them out. They were building logical reasoning skills, which involve relationships between real objects and the testing of hypotheses: “What will happen if I go this way?” Children were exhibiting these thinking skills through play. The change in the yard and its accessibility was a shared experience, and children were motivated to share their ideas as they worked on their plans. For example, Naia enjoyed creating a new map based on the old outdoor maps, marking red X’s over the taped-off areas where we couldn’t walk. Naia, along with other children, followed her map to get to the grove. She was delighted to realize that all they needed to do was to go along the fence to get to where they wanted. This realization sparked another idea in her mind, and she came back inside to the map table, where she gathered cardboard to use as stepping stones guiding children to the sand and grove areas.

Logical Thinking: Sharing Theories

The process of back-and-forth connections turns into an opportunity for us to label words and for children to map those words together with their ideas, to understand the intents and minds of others, and to express what they want to say. —Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, co-author of Becoming Brilliant: What Science Tells Us About Raising Successful Children

US map

Since our new project had just taken off, the teachers as co-investigators of this project worked to find out more about the children’s understanding of maps. We asked questions and had discussions with the children to discover their notions about how the two-dimensional representations of their maps reflected three-dimensional spaces. These conversations revealed children’s theories, misconceptions and questions that needed further exploration. Among the questions we had were:

  • Do children know what maps tell?
  • What are children’s perceptions of how and why maps are used?
  • How does one create a map?
  • How do maps represent distance, time and landmarks?

We urged the children to listen to and share ideas so they could assimilate new information to reconstruct their understanding of maps. We also encouraged them to represent as many of the facets as they could through the drawings, extended descriptions and other media such as paint, design materials and blocks. Their rich representations revealed the full context of each child’s theory. Here are some examples:

Teresa: Map is for when you are lost, and you don’t know where to park.
Jules: You can follow the map if you want to go to the bank and you haven’t been to this country before.
John: Do you know how to map the ocean floor? You go on an underground ship. Zooming in helps you see things up close on the map.
Mila: This is the map of Hawaii. The tricky part is the bumpy hill. The bumpy is in danger, you have to slow down the car.
Eliana: It is to show you where places are and how to go there. It’s a flat piece of paper and the globe is like a ball that shows you where to go on it.
Charlotte: It is made of paper.
Kabir: Maps tell you where not to go. See, this says “no going here.”
Izzy: When I go far places, I use maps. Only when I go to Tahoe.
Ayaan: A map is to go somewhere. It can take you to San Francisco, Africa and even India. If the pilots don’t know where to go, they can use a map.

Children were appreciating the value of literacy and numeracy skills as they applied them in purposeful ways to aid in their investigation. The map project strengthened the children’s intellectual faculties, such as analyzing, predicting, hypothesizing and explaining.

Orientation and Mapmaking

You can’t know who you are until you know where you are. —Wendell Berry, poet, essayist, farmer and novelist

children's drawings

Through their representations of maps, the children were thinking about creating new connections to places. They were also grasping an understanding of orientation, spatial awareness and the relationship between their current location and where the map was guiding them. We introduced a 24” x 48” world map and several books and puzzles related to maps and travel for the children to explore. The children then began to create amazing maps of cities, countries, … and the classroom garden. Some representations were drawings and paintings, while others were 3D representations made with the basic materials. Children were creating maps of their neighborhood with unit blocks along with paper and collage materials. Many wanted to share their maps or written directions of their route to Bing from home. Some re-created these with clay or blocks and used wooden signs to provide directions. At music time, we encouraged children to make maps to go with the “Bear Hunt” song, and then, as part of a movement activity, the mapmakers led us through the yard as they “read” their maps.

As the quotes below indicate, children’s conversations reflected their growing understanding of spatial relationships:

Lara: Directions on your maps are left, right, straight.
Salman: Also, backwards.
Jocelyn: Maybe you can take this map to go forward to go home and then backwards to come back to Bing. When you go backwards it’s called reverse.
Alina: I made this map because I wanted us to be on it. (She could not find Bing on the Stanford map.) So there is where we are! The pink line is medium. The blue line is good to go to Bing School and the red one is traffic.
Leo: To get to my house, go down the freeway. Then you go the long, long, long way. Then turn around and turn around again and mine is the first house there.
Faye: This is how you get to grandma’s house. It’s not a map. It’s directions!
John: This map is for ground level and underground. (He draws carrots growing below the ground.) It’s like the subway in New York.

Creative Extensions: Taking It Beyond Mapmaking and Geography

Maps, however, were not just used for going places. These representational drawings sparked the children’s ability to visualize beyond geography. For example, Jules decided to draw a body map, saying: “The red stuff is blood. The veins bring blood to the heart. Then it goes to the lungs to get air. Then the blood goes all through your body to deliver the air.” Others were interested in his understanding of how the body works as Jules drew the veins, blood, heart and brain. Inspired by him, others started drawing their own “body maps.” We displayed a collection of these drawings with books of the human body as well as X-rays on the light table for reflection and dialogue.

map of body

An interaction between Jules and Henry is an example of how this project sparked abstract thinking and brought out their curiosity about many other topics. When they stopped at the light table in the quiet classroom after snack time to look at the body maps and X-rays, Henry held up the rib cage X-ray to the chest area of Jules’ body map drawing. Jules said, “Do you know where the ribs are? They’re right here,” as he patted both sides of his chest. They held up a foot X-ray on the body map as well, and correctly placed it at the end of one of the legs. Henry put two chest X-rays together, aligning the spines, and said, “This is how you make a whole person. You connect the spine.” Jules explained that “the spine has all of these tiny things in it.”

Multiple Means of Action and Expression

There is always a variety of child responses that demonstrate knowledge or skill, across stages of development. —Sallee Beneke and Michaelene Ostrosky, co-authors of The Project Approach for All Learners: A Hands-On Guide for Inclusive Early Childhood Classrooms

Rich, dramatic play scripts involving maps emerged, and the children engaged in role-playing during the map project that built on their strengths and extended their skills. Children imagined visiting grandparents and being with their families while traveling all over the world. They visited many familiar children’s attractions, such as Legoland and Disneyland, and had many visits to the beach. We looked for buried pirate booty, had a scavenger hunt, visited outer space to see the Mars Rover and even had an underwater adventure to find sunken treasures. These mapmaking activities supported creative expression and the children’s sense of agency.

The children also started to use map vocabulary in play. For example, Theo said, “My map is on my navigation in my car. I don’t need paper. My car always pairs me properly!” John said, “The scale tells you how far everything is. It is a symbol.” Children understood that maps employ symbols, that they are dependent on the concept of scale, that they display images from a “bird’s-eye view,” and that they reduce the size of an actual place. John further questioned, “Why on maps does it look very close but it’s very far?”

Children incorporated some travel and map-related books that we read at story time into their play. For example, they made their own versions of some of these books, using yarn to indicate the lines of travel between countries. Many conversations followed about travel time and distance.  

group map

One day, several children were waiting to play with a child who had not yet arrived at Bing, and they were wondering where she was. The children’s discussion revolved around the possibility that their friend’s father did not know the way to Bing, and he was lost because he didn’t have a map. Together, as they were waiting, this group of children decided to make a map so that the father would never get lost again. Children gathered around a large, easel-sized paper and drew the route each took to Bing school. The children described to one another what they each saw on the way to school and drew what they imagined their friend’s path to be. Later that week, the children proudly presented their collaborative map to the child’s father.

By experimenting, observing and collaborating with other children and teachers, children were able to gain new knowledge about maps and build on what they already knew. Typically, the length of time it takes to move through a project can vary depending on the richness of the topic, the time available to develop it, and the children’s and teachers’ desire and skills in sustaining the project. Though the time spent on our map study was shortened due to school closure in March because of the COVID-19 pandemic, what is important is that all the children benefited from engaging in this project, each in their unique way. Maybe we can revisit it when we see each other again .…  

two children's drawings