“Where do we live?” “Can we go to Florida?… Where is Florida anyways?” “How far away does Grandma live?”
If your preschooler is asking these questions, it may be time for a Geography lesson. One of the best ways to begin talking about our planet is to look at the big picture… Continents.
Now, before I go into this lesson, I do not expect my 4 year old to memorize all of the continents, but this is a great introduction to start answering those questions about Earth and where things are located.
This post is filled with 6 activities to guide your child when learning about the continents of our planet. You can grab my Continent Freebie with all of the cut outs at the bottom of this post!
Activity #1: Analyze a Globe
Have your child analyze a physical globe. I already had this globe from my teaching days. The continents are raised and show the difference in elevation across each continent.
I first let my child analyze the globe and take note of what she observed. We then talked about the difference in texture across the globe. Why some parts were different colors and different heights. We talked about how the planet was round and where we lived vs. other family members. This is a great hands on way to introduce your child to the world.
There are tons of different options when choosing a globe if you don’t already have one. You could purchase one similar to what I used here, or there are many Montessori based globes that are more affordable, such as this one.
Activity #2: Continent Song
Songs are a fun way to engage your kiddo in learning any new concept. I still to this day remember the continent song I learned in 2nd grade.
For this activity, we listened to this Continent Song on Youtube. This song sings the continents from largest to smallest while giving a fun visual.
Activity #3: Continent Sorting and Labeling
After singing the song a few times, we used these continent cards to identify each continent. After practicing saying the names, I gave my child this blank map and had her use the cards to label each continent. This not only helped her learn the continent names, but letter recognition as well.
Activity #4: Animal Study
For our final activity, I had my daughter cut out different animals that are wild to each continent. We talked about the animals, their names, what types of animals they are, etc.
After we discussed the animals, we used larger cut outs of each continent to create a large scale map. She had to place each continent in the right spot. Once she completed that, she was able to place the animals on the correct continent.
Activity #5: Safari Animal Craft
This activity lets your child’s creativity shine! I purchased this Jungle Bucket of Crafts from Target. Using the tools provided, we create a variety of jungle animals. As we were making the animals we discussed on which continents you would find each animal.
Activity #6: Land/Water Pirate Puzzle
The final activity we used to kind of wrap-up the lesson was this Seek and Find Floor Puzzle from Target. This was not actually in my original plan for teaching continents, or I probably would have started with this, but after the fact it led into great discussion about land vs water. We talked about the land features that are present on the island in the puzzle. Since this was more of a fun, pirate-themed puzzle we discussed the differences between real land features and some of the more fictional pieces of the puzzle. This particular puzzle gave us some great discussion about Australia as an island.
***Only one piece was harmed in the making of this puzzle… and yes, we are still searching for it lol***
There are plenty of other puzzles that could be used for this concept of land vs water. If you’re looking for one specifically about continents, Target has this one as well. It contains the 7 continents, as well as famous landmarks.
Even though teaching continents is technically a 2nd grade standard, it’s never too early to learn! These 6 activities were perfect to begin introducing our planet to my 4 year old.
Want access to all of the printables? Grab them for FREE below!