Mapping Our Community

Today we worked on creating a simple map of our community with important (to us) places marked on it.

First we got a base map free from our local council offices, you could also use a tourist map or one printed from Google Maps. We traced out the main features such as the river, main roads, town centre and the location of our house. To make it easy we stuck the original map and the tracing paper down to the table to stop it moving. We actually used baking paper rather than tracing paper as its bigger and cheaper!

Tracing the main map features

Once the tracing was complete we TURNED IT OVER and then scribbled over all the lines on the back with a soft (2B) graphite pencil.

Using the side of a soft pencil to colour over the back of our map features

We then turned the paper right side up again and taped it over some cartridge paper. Pressing firmly with an ordinary pencil we drew over all our lines again. We then removed the tracing and the graphite had transferred to the paper giving us a copy of our map. We then went over the lines where needed to give clarity.

Then the children added colours, symbols, a key, scale, compass directions and a title to their maps.

By R

By L