You've been tasked with presenting GIS to a classroom of Kindergarteners. How do you keep them engaged?

[EH_Alaska]

Hello everyone! My daughter has been begging me to come into her classroom and do something. I'm going to be going on maternity leave soon and I feel like that will be the perfect time to set up a class visit. I know I want to present on GIS, but the problem is... How do I make it exciting/engaging for a group of 5-6 year olds?

Some of my initial thoughts are:

• Share maps that they might have seen before (100 Acre Woods, Map from Dora the Explorer, etc) and discuss what maps are
• Create a map of our state, then our city, then the school's neighborhood, and finally the school to see if they can guess what the maps are showing at each level
• Talk (briefly!) about what I do in my job and how cool it is
• Bring map-related books for them to look at during their free-choice time (I loaded up during the Esri UC!)
• Put a big piece of paper over the whiteboard (or the floor) and have the whole class contribute to a pretend map
• Track down some map-related printable activities
• Create a "flyer" they can take home that has links to things like fun story maps, videos, etc. and more information on what GIS is

Please drop your own ideas and links below! I'll make sure to share how this goes. 🙂

[QuiedahCarolina]

I love the tasks!  Yes I agree with familiarity being key but let's make it useful to the child in the context of safety.  Map out their neighborhood by marking that are in their environment.  And give them the context of a fire, where would you go, outside of the house and where is that based off of their neighborhood and people they know in this space.  Lots of colors red as danger spots and green for safe spaces.  The rest is up I. The air and then have someone walk it and engage a short video to bring back and share with the class.  

[L77]

You could make a map of their school and print out copies then have them draw and write in the location of things on campus like the swing set, bathrooms, cafeteria. Then you could go over why we use maps and what kind of things are important to map at a school.

Then you could add all their suggestions on a ArcPro map or online map and print out a copy to put on the classroom wall.

[RonaldHaug]

Hi Ellie,

Nice to hear from you again! Congratulations.

One fun thing we did in our cartography class was a "mental map".

I did one of all the places I go in my little town of Mt Shasta California, like the bakery, post office, lake, ice rink, library, polling place, grocery store, and of course the mountain.

I did it in colored pens and pencils, and actually it was quite fun. Not to scale, for sure.

Maybe the children can draw places in your town, or even their own houses and yards, on smaller pieces of paper and then put them all together on a bigger one, and then color it all in. Or they could make an imaginary town inhabited by all their favorite pets and animal friends.

I hope all of you have alot of fun.

[JesseCloutier]

All the ideas that have been shared here are terrific! We'll add some resources to the available options as well: There are some great GIS activities and lessons for kids to be found on the GIS Day website, including in this ArcGIS StoryMap and additional selections at the bottom of the GIS Day Resources page. Whatever you end up doing, we can't wait to hear how it goes, Ellie!

[DougBrowning]

I did a project with a high school once using 123 to collect citizen science data.  Bird sightings, animal sightings, litter, rare plants, etc