Geography unit for 1st grade

I worked up this unit to teach my daughter first grade geography. I'm using Rebecca Rupp's excellent Home Learning Year By Year as my curriculum guide, and the phrases in quotes are from that book. I got all the books at the library and almost all the rest of the materials free online. ( I had to buy apples for the pie!)

"I. Know the uses of maps and globes. Understand the meaning of a map's key and the use of map legends and symbols."

Read Me on the Map by Joan Sweeney

Make maps of her bedroom, house, and neighborhood like the girl in the book.

Do the lesson plans and activities in Map Adventures on the USGS website (these include learning about map grids, legends, and symbols).

"II. Know the cardinal directions."

Read North, South, East and West by Franklyn M. Branley (an excellent book unjustly out of print--I got ours at the library and used copies are available cheap online)

Do the activity in the Branley book where we outline our shadows at various times of day to determine where each of the cardinal directions lies.

I had her work on a free printable sample page from a Teacher Created Resources Map Skills book. (Follow the link and click on sample pages).

Do the free Treasure Map lesson from www.homeschoolscience.com. We had a lot of fun with this. I downloaded some fun free pirate fonts and symbols and printed the directions on marbled paper which my husband burned around the edges. We hid a shoebox full of chocolate coins and little toys for them to find.

"III. Be able to identify the world's major oceans and continents, the equator, the northern and southern hemispheres, and the North and South Poles. Kids should know the locations of the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, and Arctic Oceans, and some basic information about each. In studying the continents, kids should be introduced to notably prominent continental features, such as Mount Everest, the Sahara Desert, the Amazon rain forest."

Read Blast Off to Earth! by Loreen Leedy--this is a fantastic book!

Label the continents and oceans on a world map (available here.)

Learn to sing Do You Know the Continents? and Earth's Four Oceans songs. I found these here. (Follow the link, scroll down about halfway to American: Early People and Civilizations (Maya, Inca, Aztec), click on Maya, Inca, Aztec and Ancient Civilizations (2000) and scroll down to page 17 of the pdf file)

Read the Continents books by David Petersen (Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, South America)

I had her label major landforms and features on blank outline maps available free here and here.

(We tied in some of the continents to our history study--for instance we did Africa right before studying Ancient Egypt, and I'm saving North and South America for next semester when we do American History.)

Read the Oceans series by Anne Ylvisaker (Antarctic, Arctic, Atlantic, Indian, Pacific)

We interspersed the Oceans books among the Continents books. There are some little activities you can do at the end of each of the Oceans books.

Read How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman

Make an apple pie, of course!

Read Somewhere in the World Right Now by Stacey Shuett