First: Every time you say "She's almost three," I have to sit back and remember, "Oh, that's right, she's only almost three."
I used to lie around reading the atlas. The concept of maps can be picked up very young, but it helps to have basic training the way you do basic training for literacy by helping her spell her name, having alphabet fridge magnets up, reading aloud, etc.
When you're arranging furniture in the new place, you can draw a map of the room with her by your side, figuring out where things go. Try printing out a google map of a place you go regularly that's only two or three turns away, and follow it (with her) to get there. The book "Me on the Map" is good for the experience of powers of scale.
With our big board-book atlas at nursery school (it wasn't great but it was good, I think it was called "It's a Big Big World") we used to talk about where kids traveled, or their grandparents came from, etc. When Ali moved to Dubai we found Dubai, when Violet came back from her grandparents' place in Florida, we found Florida. When Betsy sent us a postcard from Colorado, we found Colorado. And because it was a board book, I just left it out, and they'd pore over it too. They liked finding places where "toilet paper" came from (paper forestry is represented by big rolls of paper on the map), where kangaroos live (pics of kangaroos on Australia), where sharks are, where trains are, where the airport is, etc.
You can get an inflatable "beach ball" globe for ten bucks online. There are pictures of real life in Africa (malaria and HIV and war in Darfur can wait) online, or in National Geographic from the library booksale.
(Hang on. Have we touched something I'm passionate about?)
no subject
I used to lie around reading the atlas. The concept of maps can be picked up very young, but it helps to have basic training the way you do basic training for literacy by helping her spell her name, having alphabet fridge magnets up, reading aloud, etc.
When you're arranging furniture in the new place, you can draw a map of the room with her by your side, figuring out where things go. Try printing out a google map of a place you go regularly that's only two or three turns away, and follow it (with her) to get there. The book "Me on the Map" is good for the experience of powers of scale.
With our big board-book atlas at nursery school (it wasn't great but it was good, I think it was called "It's a Big Big World") we used to talk about where kids traveled, or their grandparents came from, etc. When Ali moved to Dubai we found Dubai, when Violet came back from her grandparents' place in Florida, we found Florida. When Betsy sent us a postcard from Colorado, we found Colorado. And because it was a board book, I just left it out, and they'd pore over it too. They liked finding places where "toilet paper" came from (paper forestry is represented by big rolls of paper on the map), where kangaroos live (pics of kangaroos on Australia), where sharks are, where trains are, where the airport is, etc.
You can get an inflatable "beach ball" globe for ten bucks online. There are pictures of real life in Africa (malaria and HIV and war in Darfur can wait) online, or in National Geographic from the library booksale.
(Hang on. Have we touched something I'm passionate about?)