Now that you’ve seen our TV public service announcement (PSA), we’d like to hear your thoughts. If you could make a PSA for geographic literacy, what would it include? What other ideas do you have for ways to fire Americans up about the importance of global knowledge? We want to hear all your ideas—big and small. Tell us!
My Wonderful World Home | About My Wonderful World | Sign Up for Updates
The children should be teach something of everything , and then, as far as possible, everything of something.
As an educator, you go out and buy 10 World maps and 10 maps of the U.S. and move everything around so groups of three children have their own map on the floor and they learn all of the states, then the countries in North America, Central America, and South America.(It is important to spend some time on Canada and Mexico, as they are our good neighbors). You plan trips and use the proper routes to get there. Then you move on to the World maps and learn all of the countries and continue to take imaginary
trips. You encourage the children to bring in pictures of leaders and important places.
There are wonderful maps on shower curtains that can be placed up on a wall where children can have fun learning on their own.
You may ask where do you get the $ for these items? Well, some of us paid for them and considered them an investment in the youngsters we cared so much about.
You encourage the children to share at least one article from the newspaper each day and you let them find the city, state, or country related to incident. One article each day would total about 180 a year.
Once you start this type of learning, the ideas will overwhelm you. You’ll wake up at night and imagine other wonderful ideas where the computer can assist the children in their pursuit of knowledge about the world they live in.
Second and third graders can learn more with this approach than with any textbook.
Fourth and fifth graders can plan trips with a given amount of money and decide which mode of transportation is best to use.
They can check gas prices for a car, train prices, and the cost of a flight. If they can do it in foreign currency, they most certainly can do so when using only one currency.
Sadly, we underestimate the power of the mind of most children. Give them fun and freedom and they will fly…….