Elementary Middle School
Social StudiesFile Folder GamesPrintables
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.
More often than not, when teaching our children geography, it is treated as something that has to be done, something you just have to get through, a stepping stone to get to the fun things like art, music, and science experiments. With a file folder game like this, however, geography can be just as much fun!
When your kids are young, you start out teaching them your home address. Before long, you move onto the city and the state that you live in and then your country.
As they get older though, you move on and your lessons get a little bit bigger.
You start looking at a globe or a world map and talking about the various different continents, hemispheres, and oceans.
It may seem like a simple concept, but it is a vital one.
It is necessary for children to understand just how big the Earth is, to realize just how small their city is in relation to the rest of the world, to gain an understanding of distant places and this file folder game is a great way to get started.
With this game, your child will learn the names and locations of all seven continents and five oceans and putting it together is super simple.
To start, like all of our other games, you’ll need some clear contact paper to attach the cover to the front of your file folder.
With that done, you’ll open up your folder and add the map.
Now, there are probably a number of ways that you could do this but for ours, I cut out the two map pages from the printable set (below) and the labels and used more clear contact paper to attach the maps to the inside of the folder.
PRO TIP: Leave a little bit of space, right over the middle crease, between the two pages as shown above to keep the game from warping or peeling off when you close the folder.
When your maps are in place, add some Velcro dots to the map where the labels should be and add the other side of the Velcro to the backs of the continent and ocean name labels that have been cut out and laminated.
QUICK NOTE: There are actually six ocean labels included in this set. The label for the Southern Ocean can be interchanged with the label for the Antarctic Ocean depending on your preference.
When you’re ready, have your child take the label pieces and attach them where they belong.
It may take a bit as remembering all of the different continent and ocean names can be a little tricky at first, but before you know it, they’ll have them all down.
