Family Activity: Fifth through Eighth Grades

Mental Maps

We all have “mental maps”—the idiosyncratic maps that we would draw (if we had to) from our memories and impressions of places. These mental maps help us structure the world around us, and they become more complex as we grow older. It can be revealing and interesting to draw mental maps on paper. In this activity, you and your children will remember a place you’ve visited together and create mental maps of it. You’ll then make mental maps of the world.

1. Think of an outing or vacation that you’ve recently taken with your children. Make sure it’s not a place you go on a regular basis (not the shopping mall or the local park).

2. Remind your children of the trip and lead them in drawing maps of the place you visited and of the route you took from home to get there. Use only your memories and don’t refer to printed maps. Your children might say, “That’s impossible!” and claim that they don’t remember much about the trip. If challenged, however, they will probably recall a number of details.

3. After you’ve drawn the maps, compare your drawings. Are they similar? Do you all have similar memories of the route and of the place itself? Look at a real map of the route and the location to see how accurate your mental maps are. Discuss the differences. Are there certain memories that color your impression of what the route or the place looks like?

4. Now challenge your children to draw mental maps of the world. Your maps should feature the continental outlines, major islands, and as many physical features (such as mountain ranges and large lakes) as possible. Will this be easier or more difficult than creating the previous mental map? Why? It’s generally more difficult for a person to mentally map places that he or she has never seen. On the other hand, your children may have seen so many world maps in their lives that they’ve got a pretty good sense of what the world looks like.

5. Compare your mental maps of the world, and determine which areas of the world you think are the trickiest to map. Why are these places difficult? Are the places with which you’re most familiar easier to map than other places?

6. Ask your children to take their mental world maps to school and compare them to the National Geographic physical map in their classroom. How accurate are the continental outlines? How accurate are the physical features? Are there any physical features that are completely off the mark? Why do they think they erred on certain features while getting others right?

Le texte des idées d’activités scolaires et familiales a été préparé par Mme. Betsy Hedberg, de Curriculum Adventures, pour la National Geographic Society à l’occasion de la Carte-cadeau du millénaire. La traduction en a été assurée par M. Daniel Dupêcher. Les soumissionnaires de la Carte-cadeau sont American Plastics Council, Kodak, State Farm Insurance, et Subaru of America.