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Social Studies Activities for Kids

Geography Fortune-Tellers

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My girls are obsessed with fortune-tellers. Just obsessed. And, who can blame them? I was a bit obsessed myself when I was a child.

When I was a child, they were often designed to actually tell a fortune. Will you live in a mansion, travel to Paris, or have 10 children? We came up with some of the most outrageous fortunes!

But, nowadays, I often see fortune tellers used as a learning game. I just love this re-invention of an old toy.

We decided to use them as a geography activity and my girls just loved this process. They’ve been playing with their Geography Fortune-Tellers again and again and again.

Disclosure: There are Amazon Affiliate and other affiliate links in this article which means, at no additional cost to you, we could receive compensation for our recommendations. You can read our full disclosure policy on our Disclosure Page for more details.

Make Geography Fortune-Tellers, a fun geography activity to help your child learn continents, countries, oceans, US states, or famous cities.

100 Fun & Easy Learning Games for Kids

Recently, my friends from The Educators’ Spin on It sent us a copy of their new book 100 Fun & Easy Learning Games for Kids: Teach Reading, Writing, Math and More with Fun Activities by Amanda Boyarshinov and Kim Vij. My girls have devoured this book. They’ve got activity after activity bookmarked to try.

The book is great for kids in preschool through third grade and many of the activities can be adapted to your kid’s ability. Not only that, but Kim and Amanda have already provided three different variations for each activity. I love how flexible this book is!

Make Geography Fortune-Tellers, a fun geography activity to help your child learn continents, countries, oceans, US states, or famous cities.

Geography Fortune Tellers

All of the different variations provided for each activity was why it was so easy for us to add our own twist to their Continent Fortune-Tellers project.

My third grader already knows all the continents. So, in order to make it more challenging for her, we switched out the continents for individual countries.

We each made our own fortune-tellers. That was part of the fun for my girls! The folding instructions in the book were very easy to follow.

Once it was folded, we lifted all the flaps and wrote “Find (a specific country)” We added numbers to the outsides of the flaps.

Make Geography Fortune-Tellers, a fun geography activity to help your child learn continents, countries, oceans, US states, or famous cities.

One thing I  really loved (and I know you will too) about this book is that the instructions are clear and easy.

Plus, the book is full of beautiful full-color pictures. I always prefer to see pictures to go along with kids crafts and activities – that’s why I love blogs so much. And, this book delivers. My girls are both drawn to the pictures and have leafed through the book many times since it arrived on our doorstep.

Make Geography Fortune-Tellers, a fun geography activity to help your child learn continents, countries, oceans, US states, or famous cities.

My girls scoured the globe to find the countries to add to their fortune-tellers. I made mine easier for my first grader to use, but the girls made some challenging fortune-tellers.

Find Mali, find Somalia, and find Laos. Can you do it? Thanks to their fortune-tellers, my girls can easily find these countries.

If you don’t want to do the continents or even countries for this geography activity, you could try oceans, US states, major cities, or famous landmarks. There are just so many ways to add your own spin on it.

Play this geography activity

To play the game, you choose a number. The person with the fortune-teller moves it back and forth that many times.

Then, choose another number and the person with the fortune-teller will move it back and forth that many time.

Finally, choose one more number and lift the flap. Find that country on a map or globe. Keep going as many times as you want.

Make Geography Fortune-Tellers, a fun geography activity to help your child learn continents, countries, oceans, US states, or famous cities.

I can’t recommend 100 Fun & Easy Learning Games for Kids enough. You’ll find reading, writing, math, science, music, art, and geography activities. It’s a fun source for after-school activities to enforce what your kids are learning in school or a great source for learning activities to help prevent summer slide.

The games are fun. We’ve already tried out more than this in the short time we’ve had the book. I know we’ll have fun all summer!

Thank you Kim and Amanda for writing such a fun book! You can grab your own copy at Amazon here at this link.

Make Geography Fortune-Tellers, a fun geography activity to help your child learn continents, countries, oceans, US states, or famous cities.

You may also like one of these geography activities:

Erupting Mount Vesuvius: Combining History with Science

Travels with Charlie: Loons and the Lakes of Minnesota

Mapping the Olympics

Erupting Mount Vesuvius: Combining History with Science

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I’m not sure if there’s a kid these days that hasn’t made a volcano. It’s such a classic science experiment. It’s fun to put together and it’s fun to watch the eruption.

Both of my girls have done this experiment before. In fact, they’re old hands at it. So, it was time to kick it up a notch and combine some history, some science, and a good book into one fun activity. We’re going to learn about Pompeii and recreate the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

Combine history with science in this fun STEM learning activity for kids. Learn about Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius and create your own volcanic eruptions.

Disclosure: This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. Please see my Disclosure Page for more details.

You Wouldn’t Want to Live in Pompeii!

Have you read any of the books in the You Wouldn’t Want to series?

We discovered them about a year ago and have been enjoying them whenever we find them at the library. This series is such a fun way to learn about history. You learn about the gritty and real parts of history in a kid-appropriate way.

Combine history with science in this fun STEM learning activity for kids. Learn about Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius and create your own volcanic eruptions.

Recently, we brought home You Wouldn’t Want to Live in Pompeii! A Volcanic Eruption You’d Rather Avoid by John Malam.  Pompeii is such a fascinating story. It seems like the plot of a good fiction book, only it’s very, very real.

In this book we became a resident of Pompeii. We learned about what life was like in the town in AD 79. We lived through the days leading up to the eruption, we experienced just how frightening it was during the eruption, and we learned what life was like for those who survived. This book covered a lot of good stuff.

Combine history with science in this fun STEM learning activity for kids. Learn about Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius and create your own volcanic eruptions.

Building Mount Vesuvius

Once we were done reading, we were ready to recreated the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. We used a small cup and some modeling clay to create our volcano.

We were very aware that our model was not an accurate model of the volcano. But, nonetheless, we talked about the different parts we learned about in our book. The cup represented our magma chamber (the space under the mountain that is filled with molten rock). We built a mountain around it using the modeling clay.  (You can also use play dough for this step.)

Combine history with science in this fun STEM learning activity for kids. Learn about Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius and create your own volcanic eruptions.

Once Mt. Vesuvius was complete, we put it in the corner of our plastic tray and got to work building Pompeii.

Note: You’ll want to do this experiment on an enclosed surface. It will get messy! We used a plastic tray. If you don’t have a plastic tray, a baking sheet will also work well. 

We used our Legos and built a tiny town to represent Pompeii. We had houses, a library, a school, a vineyard, and a river made out of clay.

Combine history with science in this fun STEM learning activity for kids. Learn about Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius and create your own volcanic eruptions.

Erupting Mount Vesuvius

Finally, it was eruption time! My girls filled the cup half full of baking soda. We wanted a big eruption. Then, they added the white vinegar. Boom! Mount Vesuvius erupted and the lava flowed toward Pompeii.

We knew our experiment wasn’t quite complete. We missed the tremors that happened for days before and also the ash that fell from the sky before the lava started flowing. So much ash and pumice fell that roofs began to collapse and started burying the town. By the time it was over, the ash, lava, and volcanic debris completely buried the town.

But, wait a minute! What about the science?

Baking soda is a base and vinegar is an acid. When the two meet, a chemical reaction occurs which creates carbon dioxide – the bubbling, fizzing reaction. The carbon dioxide creates a pressure which pushes your mixture out of the cup similar to the pressure that pushes the molten rock out of the volcano.

Combine history with science in this fun STEM learning activity for kids. Learn about Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius and create your own volcanic eruptions.

I’ve always loved bringing history alive. It’s such a great way to explore and learn about the world, both past and present. And, it was so much fun to tell the story of Pompeii through science. It’s a lesson we’ll never forget!

This post is part of the Storybook Science series which links great kids’ books with fun science project. Click the button below (or click here) to find the rest of the participants in the series.

Here are some more fun science projects you’ll enjoy:

Hot Chocolate Science

Melting Crayons Science Experiment

Chemical Reactions with Pennies

Art + Science: Sun Prints

Making Butter: Little House Inspired Science

Loon Craft and Learning About the Lakes of Minnesota

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Welcome to Minnesota!

The weather is finally getting nice. We’re know for our cold winters, with plenty of snow and temperatures plunging down below zero degrees Fahrenheit. But when the weather is nice, we get outside.

Minnesota marks the beginning of the Mississippi River in Itasca State Park. It begins as a small stream that you can walk across.

We’re known for our lakes and have over 90,000 miles of shoreline. That’s more than California and Florida – combined!

The lakes are where you often find our state bird, the common loon. And to celebrate our state bird, we’re going to make a fun loon craft.

Learn about Minnesota, its 10,000 lakes, and its state bird when you make this fun loon craft while you craft through all 50 states.

Disclosure: I received a free copy of the book, Travels With Charlie: Across the Midwest, in order to create this post. All opinions and activities are my own. This post also contains Amazon Affiliate and other affiliate links. Please see my disclosure for more details.

The common loon makes its summer home along the shorelines of our lakes. We’re always so excited to see a loon family, especially when their babies are little as they often ride on their mother’s back.

Even when you can’t see the loons, you can hear them. Their call is distinct and sometimes quite haunting.

If you want to hear a loon, check out the Cornell Lab of Ornithology All About Birds site. They have several recordings of a loon call.

Learn about Minnesota, its 10,000 lakes, and its state bird when you make this fun loon craft while you craft through all 50 states.

We are already big fans of the common loon and wanted to their image in an art project. This project is easy to do with a very pretty result.

Supplies Needed:

Watercolor paper (this works best, but you can use any white paper you have on hand)
Watercolors
Black construction paper
Oil pastels
Scissors
Glue

Learn about Minnesota, its 10,000 lakes, and its state bird when you make this fun loon craft while you craft through all 50 states.

Create your loon craft

We began by painting our background.

Loons are often found swimming on a lake, so we used blue and white watercolors to paint lake waters for our background.

Learn about Minnesota, its 10,000 lakes, and its state bird when you make this fun loon craft while you craft through all 50 states.

While waiting for our background to dry, we worked on our loon.

We drew a simple silhouette on the black construction paper and cut it out.

We copied an image found in the book, Loon at Northwood Lake by Elizabeth Ring. It’s a wonderful book to read if you want to learn more about the common loon.

Learn about Minnesota, its 10,000 lakes, and its state bird when you make this fun loon craft while you craft through all 50 states.

Next, we used our oil pastels to draw the details on the loon.

My preschooler drew a red eye and white details. She opted for spots instead of the checked pattern on the loons back and included the white belly. She’s never been one to get bogged down in the details!

Once our background was dry, we glued our loon to it.

Learn about Minnesota, its 10,000 lakes, and its state bird when you make this fun loon craft while you craft through all 50 states.

I love the results of our loon craft and love learning more about Minnesota. Travels With Charlie: Across the Midwest served as our jumping off point for this project. It was so much fun to hear about some of the more quirky finds in our state, like the Giant Prairie Chicken Statue and the Jolly Green Giant Statue. I’ve got to see them both sometime!

About Booking Across the USA

Booking Across the USA is a collaborative project with over 50 bloggers participating. Stop by the landing page and see all the other stops on the route. You’ll be able to find a project for each of the 50 states. What fun! Hope you enjoy traveling across all 50 states.

You May Also Enjoy One of These Fun Projects:

Aboriginal Dot Painting: Exploring Australia Through Art

Cityscape Printmaking

Moose Silhouette Paintings

US State Trading Cards at Royal Baloo

Olympic Mapping Activity

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You know what’s great about the Olympics, besides all the awesome sports events?

It’s a wonderful introduction to world geography.

I took advantage of my girls’ natural curiosity about the athletes to show them the countries each one represents with this simple Olympic Mapping Activity.

Locate different countries on a world map and learn about their flags with this fun Olympic mapping activity you can do while watching the Olympic Games.

Disclosure: This post contains Amazon Affiliate and other affiliate links. Please see my Disclosure Page for more details.

Prep Your Olympic Mapping Activity

I began with a simple map of the world, which I pinned on a cork board.

We printed ours out at Maps of World. I was looking for one with the countries labeled, but didn’t have the busyness of latitude and longitude lines.

Locate different countries on a world map and learn about their flags with this fun Olympic mapping activity you can do while watching the Olympic Games.

Make Your Flags of the World

We then settled in with the computer and tiny flag making supplies.

We used the official Sochi 2014 Website, teams section to find the different countries participating in the Olympics along with a picture of that nation’s flag.

Another bonus to using the Sochi Website was that we were also able to see pictures of the athletes and could place them with their country.

Special Note: You can find the PyeongChang 2018 website here if you want to do an updated version of this activity for the 2018 Winter Olympics.

Locate different countries on a world map and learn about their flags with this fun Olympic mapping activity you can do while watching the Olympic Games.

We began with some of the top medal winners (Norway and Canada), our country (the United States), and the host country (Russia).

We then moved on to other countries that the girls found fascinating.

Locate different countries on a world map and learn about their flags with this fun Olympic mapping activity you can do while watching the Olympic Games.

To make our flags, we used pins and tiny pieces of paper. Each piece of paper was 1-inch wide by 3/4-inch tall. We used markers to create our flags.

It was a bit of a challenge creating some of those tiny flags (hello, Canadian maple leaf), but we worked at it.

We left the stars off the US flag cause we didn’t have room, but we did the best we could do on them all.

Once each flag was made, I taped it on a sewing pin (see the example in the above photo).

Locate different countries on a world map and learn about their flags with this fun Olympic mapping activity you can do while watching the Olympic Games.

Map the Olympic Games

Once each flag was finished, we placed it on our map.

We took note of the size of the country and where it was located. My girls could already find a few countries (US, Canada, Mexico, China, Australia), and were fascinated to see where other countries were located.

They took note of just how tiny some countries are when compared to a huge country like Russia.

Locate different countries on a world map and learn about their flags with this fun Olympic mapping activity you can do while watching the Olympic Games.

We’ve been gradually adding flags every day now. In fact, we’re still not finished with this Olympic mapping project. Quite frankly, I hope it continues for quite awhile.

Have you been taking advantage of the Olympic Games for learning opportunities?

For More Fun and Learning:

Create flags of the world puzzles. You can find the instructions at Inspiration Laboratories.

Work the atlas puzzles at National Geographic. So much fun for puzzle lovers!

This fascinating infographic at Colour Lovers show the colors most commonly used in flags around the world. You have to scroll down to the bottom of the page to see the full infographic. It’s so interesting!

Locate different countries on a world map and learn about their flags with this fun Olympic mapping activity you can do while watching the Olympic Games.