Sample Pages from Draw Oceania
Island Challenge
The challenge in this book is presenting all the islands in a way that will make it easy for your students to place them in the correct positions. I have settled on two solutions: a unique grid and outlining the group of islands within the grid. This will allow your students to more accurately place the islands based on the outline.
See Any Sea Creatures?
Most of the outlines are based upon sea creatures: hammerhead shark, jelly fish, crab, clams, silver dollars and more. This will give your students a nice device to remember the island groups. Once they have completed their map, they can leave the outlines if they wish or erase them.
Geography Introduction: Here's Why
Drawing a map, like reading, or algebra, is a difficult skill to learn and if one sets an 8-year-old down with a map of the US and says "draw this," the child will be as overwhelmed as if he were confronted with reading Shakespeare before he could read The Cat in the Hat, and will quickly abandon it. Sure, a child could understand and appreciate the story of Hamlet as well as read a map at the age of 8, but if you ask her to READ Hamlet or DRAW a map, that is another story. The intellect of a child far outpaces her skills and if you ask too much too soon from her skills you can forever extinguish a desire for more.
In this series of books I simply want to introduce children to geography by giving them a primer in the borders and locations of states, provinces and countries. By doing so I hope to invite them further into the beautifully complicated world of geography.
Are these drawings cartoons? Absolutely they are, and in the best sense of that word. The word "cartoon" originated in the Middle ages and meant what we would today call a "sketch," something that the artist drew as he thought out, or prepared to draw his masterpiece. By engaging students in drawing "cartoon" maps I hope to give them enough self-confidence to someday give the real thing a try.
Geography is essential to a child’s education. And basic to that study is a simple outline of states, countries and continents. In Draw Oceania I have tried to give students an easy introduction to committing the map of the Oceania to memory. Through simple, step-by-step instructions, students learn to draw the countries and islands and, with a little practice, will be able to draw Oceania as a whole.
