| Population: A Growing Problem
K-4 Activity: Big Numbers
Geography is about context—putting places into their local, regional,
national, and international context. We want students to understand spatial
relationships between places near and far. We want students to understand
size relationships—how big and how small.
But understanding context and relationship is difficult because some of
the numbers are so large or abstract that they have little meaning. This
is especially true for younger children. To understand population and
population growth one must appreciate big numbers and rates of change. You
can begin to help your students to understand big numbers and rates by
working with the population data on Mexico.
How Many Classrooms?
The challenge is to get your students to understand the effects of family
size and number of children on the need for schools. To do this, begin
by asking each student to write down how many brothers and sisters she or
he has. In whatever way would work with your students, add up the
total number of siblings. (There are, on average, two children per family
in the United States.)
Now ask your students how big their class is. With that number, work out how
many classes would be needed for the total number of siblings, including
your students, if they were all attending school.
The next step is to relate these numbers to comparable numbers for Mexico.
We know that there are, on average, three children per family in Mexico,
and thus two siblings per child. Multiply the number of students in your
class by three to get the total number of Mexican students and siblings
for a Mexican class of comparable size to yours. Divide this total by the
number of students in your class and you get three again ... the number
of classrooms that would be needed in the case of Mexico. | 
