7 Hands-On Activities That Will Help You Teach Your Kids Simple Geography

The science of geography covers physical features, political borders, and world cultures. If you’re looking for geography activities for kids that are fun, hands-on, and will engage your little learners, this post is for you.

I’m going to share hands-on geography activities and some cool resources that your students will love. Plus, you can get the printable directions and the template to create a seven continents necklace at the end of this post.

1. Create a 7 continents necklace.

Do your kids know all seven continents? If not, this 7 continents necklace is a fun way to learn about the world’s continents.

Print the free template (available at the end of the post) onto printable shrink plastic, color them with colored pencils, and bake them to create your beads.

If you’re looking for activities for your continents lesson, this activity is always a hit.

2. Explore landforms and bodies of water.

Landforms and bodies of water are also key parts of any geography curriculum. They are also perfect topics for hands-on learning. Why not try building different types of landforms with modeling clay or salt-dough?

I especially love challenging my kids to build a salt-dough island that showcases several types of landforms and bodies of water. It’s always a fun project!

3. Make a map.

Map skills are an essential part of geography. Learn the basic parts of a map, practice different map skills, and then design a neighborhood map.

4. Catch a country.

You’ll need an inflatable globe for this activity. It’s basically just a game of toss with a twist. Whoever catches the globe must identify the country closest to where either of their thumbs lands on the globe before they can toss the ball/globe to the next person.

You can make this game more challenging by having kids name the country’s capital, name the continent, or share a fact about whatever country they landed on.

5. Explore the world virtually.

Have you ever wished you could travel the globe? While a round-the-world field trip isn’t feasible for most of us, virtual travel definitely is!

Take a virtual field trip and explore global destinations.

• Plan a postcard exchange.
• Try a taste test of foods from different regions.
• Read stories and folklore from different cultures.
• Locate countries on the map and globe.
• Use Google Earth to check out landmarks and geographical features.
• Listen to local music.
• Learn a few basic words in different languages, like hello, please, and thank you.

6. Create a craft.

Many kids love crafting. I know it’s a favorite in my house! Some geography craft ideas include creating flags, painting or drawing local animals, or building models of landmarks.

7. Play a geography game.

There are so many awesome geography board games and puzzles. Why not try a few? Here are just a few popular options. (Psst, these are affiliate links).

Get more geography activities for kids.

• Introduce all of the continents with fun facts with this mini-book.

• Your kids will love learning about landforms and bodies of water with this printable vocabulary puzzle.

• Or, maybe the salt-dough island project in this mini-book is just the thing to bring everything they’re learning about landforms together!

• This maps mini-book is a great way to teach map skills and types to kids. It includes ten hands-on task cards too.

• Discover more hands-on landform activities in this blog post.

Get the FREE printable 7 continents necklace activity.

If you’re looking for the directions and printable templates for the 7 continents necklace mentioned in this blog post, you can grab it below. Just fill out the form, and I’ll email it right over.