Day 1: Giant Floor Map of Canda

It has finally arrived! After an unexpected and disappointing delay of several days, the giant floor map of Canada arrived at approximately noon. I was relieved because that gave me just enough time to get to this afternoon’s originally scheduled Giant Floor Map experience at Prairie Mennonite Alternative School, just a few minutes drive from my house.

Hypothetically, the map was supposed to be delivered to our district office, but when the shipping/tracking updates unexpectedly came through with my home address, I knew I had to stick close to await the arrival. Fortunately, delivery was smooth.

In a very appropriately Canadian way, the map travels in its own hockey bag! As you might tell from the size of the map in the images below, the bag is pretty heavy. Fortunately, it is a “wheeled” hockey bag, and I am just able to heave that thing into the trunk of my car.

Packing and unpacking is definitely a two-person job. Thanks, Mrs. H. for help with the first unveiling! And 3rd-grade student Trudy was a splendid pack-up helper.

This map is magical. Adults are certainly drawn to it. They reverently take off their shoes and immediately go searching for the locations that are important to them. And then the stories start….

Today’s grade 2/3 group was a good one to start with. I have many, many activities planned for all ages and subjects, but my most anticipated ones are for grade 2 students. Grade two Social Studies does a comparative study of 3 Canadian communities – one on the plains of Saskatchewan, one in Nunavut, and one in New Brunswick. I created a sorting activity with beautiful pictures of wildlife from each different region. The rollout of this part of the lesson was not stellar. I will have to get better at managing where students sit or stand – close enough to be able to see necessary detail but spread out enough to see the whole map.

Fortunately, I get to try again first thing tomorrow morning with the grade two students at Foremost School. By the end of the day, I will have worked with 6 classes and tried out almost all of my lesson options! Until then…

Investigating similarities of wildlife that lives in the Arctic.