Never Eat Sour Watermelons

This week in Social Studies we have been learning about map skills and directional words. To help the students remember the order of the directions, we learned the silly phrase "Never eat sour watermelons!" This helps the students remember north, south, east, and west. We discussed how north should be on the top of a map. We then played "Simon Says" in our classroom using directional words. The students then drew a map of our classroom showing where objects are located related to which wall they are closest to. To extend the learning, the students identified various rooms in our school on a blueprint of the school. They identified where the gym, the music room, the art room, the cafeteria, library, computer lab, the playground, the office, and our classroom are. They then color-coded them on their own copy of the school blueprint according to which part of the school they are in - the north, sount, east, or west. Tomorrow they will use their maps to go on a walk to find rooms around the school.