Geography Notebooking: Creative Ideas to Bring Maps to Life

One of my kids’ favorite activities in recent years has been creating maps to go alongside our country unit studies. They love adding their own drawings, notes, and colors to bring each map to life. Geography notebooking is a fun way for them to explore geography, history, and literature while making the learning process more interactive and memorable.

What is Geography Notebooking?

Geography notebooking can be a fun approach to learning that combines traditional mapwork with creative journaling. Students can create personalized maps, record their observations, and reflect on their learning experiences. It’s a simple way to integrate geography with culture, history, and language arts.

The Benefits of Combining Notebooking with Mapwork

Combining notebooking with mapwork offers several benefits:

• Hands-On Learning: Students are able to create and annotate their own maps, adding their own personal learning discoveries along the way.
• Critical Thinking: Notebooking encourages students to make connections between different geographical features and their significance.
• Creative Expression: It allows students to show what they’ve learned in a personal and creative way.

Creative Ideas to Bring Maps to Life

Since starting our Global Explorers journey, my kids have turned blank maps into vibrant, artistic creations, adding colorful illustrations and doodles as we explore different countries. These mapwork activities have become a fun, hands-on adventure that blends geography with notebooking, helping to build a variety of skills like creative expression and critical thinking. Watching their excitement as they personalize each map and add unique details has been such a joy, and we all love to look back at the maps they’ve created.

Here are some of the geography notebooking and mapwork activities we’ve completed lately:

Geography Notebooking: Geographical Maps

A lot of times my girls will simply draw a geographical map for each country we’re studying. They’ll label different geographical features and include other bits of information they’ve learned throughout the unit study.

Geography Notebooking: Story Maps

During our study of Cuba, my oldest daughter created a map based on excerpts from Alma Flor Ada’s memoir Island Treasures: Growing Up In Cuba. As we read, she drew a picture of the author’s childhood home and the surrounding landscape based on excerpts from the book. Story mapping is a fantastic way to bring stories to life, as it encourages children to really connect with the narrative by visualizing and interacting with the world of the story beyond just the text.

During our study of Colombia, we read the Juana & Lucas series. First, my daughter recorded Juana’s trip to Spaceland and then decided to add in some of her own illustrations in the style of author and illustrator Juana Medina.

Geography Notebooking: Historical Maps

Creating historical maps is an easy way to make history more engaging for kids. During our study of Mali, my daughter drew a map alongside her geography notebooking entry about Mansa Musa and his journey across Africa.

Below is another example of one of our geography notebooking activities from our study of Central America. She chose to write about the Inka creation story and illustrated it.

Of course, simply adding color to a printed map results in a gorgeous keepsake learning piece, too!

Geography Notebooking: Creating Landform Maps with Rice

I’m pretty sure this was a social media trend a few years ago, but both my kids LOVED using rice to create different landform maps. Pictured below, you can see how they used rice to create the three different types of coral reefs during our study of the Caribbean. Of course, you can use this same idea to create all different types of landform maps.

Geography Notebooking: Adventure and Expedition Maps

Creating adventure or expedition maps is another way for children to explore historical journeys, such as Charles Darwin’s expedition to the Galápagos Islands or Alexander von Humboldt’s adventures through South America. These maps allow kids to visually trace the explorers’ paths, adding notes and illustrations along the way.

Geography Notebooking: Character Trait Maps

Character trait maps are a fun way for children to further connect with stories. During our study of Ghana, my kids drew a picture of Anansi the spider and labeled all his traits inside, helping them better understand his personality and actions while connecting with the different Anansi tales we read in a creative, hands-on way.

The Global Explorers Journal

Our Global Explorers Journal is another resource that encourages geography notebooking. It allows students to document their learning as they explore different countries.

Download Our New Printable Mapwork Activity Sheets

Given how much success we’ve had incorporating creative mapping activities into our homeschooling curriculum over the past few years, I’m excited to share our new Mapwork Activity Sheets for each country included in the Global Explorers curriculum.

Designed to guide your kids through the process of creating their own personalized maps, these mapwork activity sheets include prompts for labeling key features like cities, rivers, mountains, and cultural landmarks. As your kids work through each country study, they can use these sheets to add their own drawings, notes, and colors, creating a special keepsake of their learning. These maps can become a fun reminder of what they’ve discovered and created along the way.