This month, our Summer Virtual Book Club for kids read books by Kevin Henkes. One of our favorite Henkes books is Sheila Rae the Brave, which is about a young mouse who claims she is brave, until one day when she decides to take a new route to get home. She ends up getting lost and starts to feel scared, until her younger sister shows her the way home.
I decided to combine this book with a fun and simple memory game to learn about our neighborhood and/or community.
Supplies:
- Map (print from google maps)
- Pencil
- Camera
- Printer
- Tape
- Scissors
- Toy car (optional)
Directions:
You can choose to do this activity on a smaller scale (just around the neighborhood), however I made a larger scale map and made one of our community. Just go to Google Maps and print out a few pages of your neighborhood or community. Then cut off the white edges, align the streets and tape the map together.
Once the map is made take a walk with your child(ren) around the neighborhood or go for a drive. Stop in various locations and point the locations out on the map. Mark the location with pencil with an X to remember the area you visited and take a picture of the surroundings.
Once you get back home. Upload the pictures to the computer and print them out. I took nine pictures for this game and made wallet size prints.
Have your child cut the pictures out.
To play the game, have your child match the photo with the locations that you marked on the map with an X. If they are having trouble remembering, discuss with them what you sights, sounds, smells, etc. that you may have discovered as you walked or drove down each street.
He’s happy that he matched all the pictures correctly.
An additional activity: See if your child can remember the exact path you walked or drove by driving a toy car along the map.
Here are the authors for this summer and linky dates:
June 18th- Mo Willems
July 16th- Don and Audrey Wood
August 20th- Kevin Henkes
We hope you enjoyed our post! If you’ve done a Kevin Henkes activity, join the fun and link up with us and all these other wonderful bloggers!