North America map!

Who would have ever thought doing Geography with a 3 year old could be so much fun?! DJ has been working with the World Map puzzle for awhile and can now name all the continents, although he usually calls Asia "the big one". Hah.



So this week I brought out the North America countries puzzle map. Because this map has so many tiny pieces, I taught him to place the pieces on the Control Map so he can remember what order they go back in. The Control Map is also labeled with the country names which I needed to know which was which. Ahem.

DJ had loved the Continent Song we found on youtube, so he of course asked for the country song. I really didn't think there would be one so imagine my surprise when I found this version on youtube. It is really just an adorable 3 year old girl singing the country names from Greenland to Dominican Republic. DJ loved it and played it over and over.

At first I pointed to the country as she sang. Then I paused the video after each name for DJ to put the puzzle piece in. After doing that a couple times, he wanted to pause it while I put the pieces in. But at the second time doing that he just let it play and I tried my best to keep up. We were both giggling crazily by the time I got to Costa Rica. So much fun.

I have to say though that I've never before wished my country had a more simple name. Canada or Haiti is SO easy compared to The United ... States ... Of ... America. Whew. And then I found myself quite annoyed that Alaska is not physically connected to the rest of the country. DJ just couldn't understand why it had the same country name as the big puzzle piece. Then once he realized that the two yellow pieces (Alaska and the 48 states) were the same country, he decided Cuba was part of Canada because both pieces are brown. Argh! Haha.


Next we brought out the World Map again and placed the animals on their home continents. Last week when we did this, I was reading the penguin card to DJ and he asked to see penguins "on my phone" which is his way of asking me to find a youtube video about penguins. Instead, I found The March of Penguins on Amazon Streaming. DJ loved it and watched the whole thing, except that he was really bothered that the mom penguins left the babies with the dad's to go off and get food. DJ insisted the dads "had to go to work" so the moms could stay with the babies.


DJ has been watching Octonauts on Netflix lately and he's learned a lot about ocean life from that so I added the Safari Ocean Toob and Coral Reef toob to our World Map. One of the Octonauts episodes is about Lemon Sharks, so DJ asked to "see Lemon Sharks on my phone."


If found this neat youtube video on Lemon Sharks and it mentions this was shot in the Bahamas.


So we circled back to the North America Control Map where the Bahamas are labeled.

Around the world and back again through the interests of a three year old.