If you’re looking for a Cubetto Lesson Plan, these are a few extension activities to continue from where Cubetto’s First Day left off.
Maps, Compasses and Directions
Learn more about maps, compasses and directions:
Cat in the Hat Learning Library: There’s a Map on My Lap
The Cat in the Hat introduces beginning readers to maps–the different kinds (city, state, world, topographic, temperature, terrain, etc.); their formats (flat, globe, atlas, puzzle); the tools we use to read them (symbols, scales, grids, compasses); and funny facts about the places they show us (“Michigan looks like a scarf and a mitten! Louisiana looks like a chair you can sit in!”).
Follow that Map
Maps are about far more than getting from A to B. Maps can help children understand and explore both their everyday environment and faraway places. With an appealing search-and-find technique, Follow That Map! is an interactive picture book that explains and demonstrates key mapping concepts. Kids will enjoy following Sally and her friends as they search for Max and Ollie, a mischievous dog and cat on the lam from the backyard. Sally and friends take an imaginative trip through the neighborhood, city and country, around the world and beyond.
Kids can join in the search for Max and Ollie, who are hiding somewhere in every map. An activity at the end of the book shows children how to make a map of their bedroom.
Tools of Navigation
Children will learn all about inventions: their inventors, the way they changed history, and their evolution over centuries, through the activities and anecdotes provided in this interactive series.
Travel through the past and into the future to explore the history of human navigation, from the crude maps of early explorers to the satellite-based Global Positioning System (GPS) of today. This guide to learning about geography, trade routes over land and sea, and navigational tools and people who used them, is supplemented with 15 hands-on projects and educational activities to expand world view and build navigational confidence.
Orienteering for Kids
Take your lessons outside and let the kids learn about using a compass with an orienteering exercise.
- How to use a compass – suggested exercises
- Handy guide for introducing orienteering to kids
- iOrienteering – orienteering on your smart phone
See also:
Environments – Farms, Deserts, Mountains, and Rivers
- Deserts around the world
- BrainPop – Desert plants and animals game
- Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum – interactive games
Cat in the Hat Learning Library: Why oh Why are Deserts Dry
In “Why Oh Why Are Deserts Dry” the Cat takes Sally and Dick to explore different kinds of deserts around the world, from the hot, dry Sonoran and Mojavi to the bitter cold Gobi and Antarctica. Young readers learn why deserts are dry, and how plants and animals—including cactus, kangaroos, camels, penguins, roadrunners, and many others—have adapted to survive the unforgiving climate. Also included: how sand dunes are formed; the reason we see mirages, and how shallow water beneath the surface of the ground can create an oasis.
Learning about Rivers
- Education World – a River of Lessons
- World Rivers Quiz
- Facts about Rivers
- BBC Bitesize – River Landforms
Earthquakes and Mountains
- Science Kids: Earthquake Activity
- Science Experiments: Make a Volcano
- PBS: Plate Techtonics
See also:
- Kids do Ecology – World Biomes
- Enchanted Learning – Biomes and Habitats
- Interactive Learning Sites for Education – Habitats
- Apps: Habitat the Game
Inventions that Changed the World
- Scholastic: Online Themed Unit – Top 10 Inventions
- Apps: Journeys of Invention
- Inventor and Inventions Study Guide
- Education World: Teaching through inventions
- More sites where children can learn about inventions
ScienceWiz: Inventions
With Inventions, discover the “why” as well as the “how” common electronic components work through the use of everyday materials. Each project contributes to the understanding of how things work. The book has beautiful step-by-step, highly visual instructions and child appropriate materials, included in this kit, encourage independent learning through play, and lead a child successfully through each invention. Although Inventions was designed for children 8 years and up, it has had an extraordinary history and following from MIT to mentor high school students in physics to U.C. Berkeley to mentor women in science to other institutions including Fermi Lab and the University of Texas at Austin.
- Build a motor, a telegraph, a light-flashing generator and a real radio with this award winning kit
- Step-by-step 3D directions and the use of everyday materials brings clarity to how things work
- Winner of the Scientific American Young Reader’s Book Award and a Creative Child Magazine Top Choice
- Includes a 48 page book and materials for your creations
