DIY Land and Water Form Tablets

As I discussed before, my son really enjoys geography. We continue to talk about the continents daily, and I am working on putting together some continent boxes for him. That being said, I decided to introduce the land and water forms to him. We started with the book Water Land, which I checked out from our library (and renewed as much as I could!). I should probably just purchase the book.

I was not too sure if my son would enjoy creating the land forms on his own just yet, so when I saw a post from a Montessori 101 member about making land and water form tactile tablets, I knew I had to try it. My son really gravitates towards anything he can touch or trace, so these seemed perfect.

Here is what our DIY land and water form tablets look like:

A total of 10 tablets - from L to R, top row: isthmus, archipelago, island; middle row: strait, system of lakes, lake; bottom row: gulf, peninsula, bay, cape.

Materials:

• 10 small wooden tablets (I purchased them from Michael's for 99 cents each)
• Blue and brown felt 
• Hot glue gun and glue
• Scissors or rotary circle cutter 
• Sharpie marker

Steps:

1. Trace the tablets on the felt so you have 10 blue rectangles and 5 brown rectangles.

2. Glue the blue felt rectangles to each tablet with hot glue. To make this a bit easier on myself, I did a line on the wood, then laid the felt down on it. I made lines all down the wood, a few at a time, so that I could control where my felt went.

3. Trim any blue felt that overhangs the tablets (this step is optional, but it helped to square off any raggedy edges).

4. Free draw the land shapes on to the brown rectangles.
*Note: Each brown piece will be used for 2 blue tablets. For example, the lake and the island are opposites of each other, so I cut out the island and was left with the shape for the lake. This is where using a rotary circle cutter is extremely useful because I got cleaner lines.

5. Cut the shapes out of the brown felt and set aside.

6. Glue the brown felt pieces on top of the blue felt for each tablet. Trim any overhang from the brown felt.

7. You are finished! I went ahead and wrote the names of each on the back of each tablet for control of error and also for my own personal reference. I also made a control sheet on my computer with information on each land and water form!

This DIY cost me about $20 and only took me about 20-25 minutes to complete!

Enjoy and thank you to the member who inspired me to make these!

Geography for 3-year-olds

My son's favorite subject right now is definitely Geography. He loves everything about globes, maps, water, land, etc. We have spent countless hours with our two globes and talking about the Earth, exploring outside for dirt, mud, rocks, water sources, and pointing out the continents anywhere we see them.

When we first started homeschooling back in September, I purchased a sandpaper globe. I introduced it to my son and showed him the different land and water areas. He has always been a tactile learner and likes the feeling of fine sandpaper, so this intrigued him right away. He spent a lot of time tracing the land, telling me which part was land and which part was water.

After he had a good handle on the difference between land and water, I introduced him to the idea of air, land, and water. Luckily for us, the lesson landed on a rainy day, so we went outside and collected some rainwater in a small mason jar, as well as a sample of the muddy, grassy earth. We brought those inside and examined them, noting the differences between them. With these mason jars, my son did some sorting activities. The first one was a land, water, air picture sorting with just the various landscapes. This was not easy for him in the beginning.

Following that, he sorted land, water, and air animals onto a mat that I printed and laminated for him. He really loved doing this. My husband explained the simple idea that land animals walked, water animals swam, and air animals flew. We use Toob animals, which can be purchased on Amazon or at your local Michael's store. Following that, my son sorted land, water, air vehicles on to the same mat. We also used the vehicles from Toobs.


Once he had worked on these for a few weeks, I knew he would be ready for the Continent Globe. I introduced this to him using the Continent Song. In the beginning, he would follow along with me while I sang and point the continents. Now, a few months later, he sings the song all the time and knows all of the continents! He even knows them by their shape, even though they are all given separate colors on the Montessori Continent globe.

I also introduced him to the different land and water forms using the book Water Land and some DIY land and water form tablets. You can see the DIY instructions in this post.

Next up I think we will do some continent boxes once I get them together!