Finding My Place in This World

We are celebrating Independence Day this week. It's difficult to explain to a three year old that we are celebrating our country's birthday... especially when he doesn't exactly understand what I mean by "country". He does, however, sort of understand our home, our street, our city, and maybe a little about our state. Last weekend, we traveled across state lines from Missouri to Illinois so we had an opportunity to talk about that. However, I decided to try and help him visualize where we fit in this big wide world with a simple nesting cup activity. (I used to do this with older kids when I was teaching, so this is a lesson we will probably repeat many times).
We began with the largest nesting cup which I termed "Our world".

The next cup represented "Our country". I put it inside our world.
Inside of that cup, I placed "Our State, Missouri".

Inside of our state, I put our town.

Inside of our town, I put our street.

Inside of our street, I put our house.

Of course, you could break this down in different ways to fit your region. You could also include continents, counties, etc. This was all that I could get a three year old to attend to.

After doing our nesting cups, we made a playdough map of the world. I found this idea at Hubbards Cupboard. Basically we just put a big blob of playdough on our country and then stuck USA flags into the playdough. My boys are really into playdough, so this was a huge hit.

I'm linking this up:





This week's theme at the Smart Summer Challenge is Me on the Map. I thought this activity would fit wonderfully!



Oh, and check out some of our favorite books to celebrate America's Birthday!