Pinpoint a City
Social Studies
Children will practice locating the home cities of sports teams on a simple state or national map.
What You Need
- outline map of your state or wall map of the United States
- teacher-made banners of various local or national sports teams
- tape, glue, wooden craft sticks or toothpicks (to hold banners)
What to Do
- Take a quick survey in your class about favorite state or national sports teams. Children may have ideas about favorite teams from listening to their families or watching teams play on TV. Write the results on the chalkboard and choose some of these teams' names to prepare sports banners.
- Using colored construction paper, make small banners of national or state sports teams (baseball, football, soccer, basketball, or a mix).
- Write the name of the team and its location (town or state) on each banner. Use wooden craft sticks or toothpicks to hold the banners.
- Help children match (and tape) each sports banner to its appropriate location on a large state map or a wall or floor map of the United States.
Teaching Options
- To increase print awareness, leave the banners in place on the map for several days at a time. Then remove the banners from the map, reshuffle them, and distribute them to the class. Let each child identify the name of the sports team on his or her banner and then replace it in the correct location on the map.
- Show children how to use tape and string or yarn to measure the distance between two teams; for example, the Miami Dolphins in Miami, Florida, and the Chicago Bears in Chicago, Illinois.