World Map Project

It has been a long time. I know, I'm sorry. I have a few blogs for you, but only one is ready today. Hopefully soon you will be able to read a few more. :)

So back in May I was going to start a project with the older kids in our Primary School (6th-8th grade about) called the world map project. Its a really neat projects that allows the kids to draw, paint and label their own world map. Geography is something they have a very good grasp of. For kids who rarely leave their village, and haven't been further north than the district town, imagining what the world is like, is really abstract.

So we were planning to do this in May, but the paint was a bit lately coming in and we couldn't start until June. There was still plenty of time to finish before school ended the last week in June, but it was a bit of a race to finish before the rainy season started. I had the help of two trainees who were visiting to help me clean the wall and get the surface ready for the kids. We were painting the outside wall of one of the school buildings. When the paint came in the kids helped me make a 6x12 foot rectangle and we were ready to start. Due to time constraints I decided to use the projector method; so we borrowed a projector from a local NGO, a generator from the shop, and projected a picture of the map on the wall for the kids to trace. To make it a bit easier we did it at night, and everyone seemed to show up to watch. There were tons of kids, some older siblings, and parents all out in the dark (we are never out after dark) to watch us trace on the school.

We had about two painting sessions that went really well before I went away for a couple days. When I came back the kids had bad news. It had rained really hard after we finished painting the last time and all the paint bubbled off the wall. At this time there was only a week and a half left of school and they were frustrated their map was ruined. The teacher and I decided it was best to start over inside the school. So we started again.




Unfortunately, this time there was no projector. So with help from the kids, the map was drawn on the wall by hand in one day. We were able to paint, draw a few national symbols, and have a lot of fun finishing the map in just one week. At the beginning of the school year next year we are going to have the kids label all of the countries, and sign their names next to the school name.






It was a really fun project, that the kids seemed to learn a lot doing. They are amazed how small Belize is in comparison to the rest of the world, but they can all locate it now. :) I am excited to see that they have a relatively permanent map in the classroom for them to use in their lessons.