Nicole Madison is mom to three wonderful girls and one literally bouncing boy. She is a freelance writer and editor, which allows her to enjoy homeschooling her children while also earning an income. Nicole incorporates free resources into homeschooling as much as possible and has come a long way since spending hundreds of dollars at the beginning of every school year. She has a passion for reading, science, and math. Visit Nicole’s website at Madison Copywriting.

Name of Product: Owl and Mouse–Maps That Teach

Link to Product/website: http://www.yourchildlearns.com/geography.htm

Description of Product: “Maps are vital to our understanding geography and the world we live in. Interactive and fun, Maps that Teach help students learn basic geography… Maps that Teach take advantage of the fact that geography is spatial. They also utilize the way kids learn best, by actively participating in their learning; learning by doing. As students assemble the maps, they build a permanent mental picture of their world.”

Nicole’s Description of Product: The Owl & Mouse Maps that Teach section offers a wonderful selection of maps you can use, explore, and print for FREE. The site has labeled and unlabeled maps, outline maps, and interactive maps. You’ll even find FREE map puzzles on this site that can be put together online. Want to print a map for use at home? You’ll find plenty of options here. In fact, you can print online maps that range in size from those that fit on just one page to those that are up to nearly seven feet wide!  Best of all, you can print them all on a regular home printer. There’s nothing to join, so you can start using these maps right away.

If you already have Adobe Acrobat Reader on your computer, you won’t have to download anything. If you don’t have Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can download it free to your computer by clicking here or by using the link on the Maps that Teach web page. This program is only necessary for viewing some of the maps, such as the individual state maps.

Homeschool Uses: This site can be an excellent resource for teaching geography at home. It includes a FREE online atlas that covers every country and every continent. When you’re teaching your child about a particular region, just click the region you want to explore, and poof!, there’s a map of the region at your fingertips. You can explore the region online or print it right from the web page. The interactive maps allow your child to look at a particular portion of a map and try to name it from memory (or a guess). Then, your child can point his mouse at the state, province, country, or continent and learn its name.

If you want to help your children memorize the states and capitals, this is the site for you. For example, you could print a labeled United States map and an unlabeled one, and have your child memorize the location of each state. After a time, you can have her try to fill in the states (or some of them) from memory. You could have her tackle specific sections of the country one at a time (East Coast, West Coast, Mid West, etc.) to make this task easier. You can even view and print maps of each individual state, complete with bodies of water, mountains, cities, and the state capitals labeled (or unlabeled), if you prefer.

If you want a wall map, you can find it here. Just go to the Megamaps page to print a map that is more than 6 feet wide. Make sure you have lots of paper and ink for this, though, as you’ll need 64 pages for the largest map. There are plenty of small maps to choose from too, so you’ll never lack choices. You can also find a cut-out, paste-up mapping project on this site that can be great for learning United States geography.

The interactive map puzzles give an added component of fun to learning geography. Your child will click a puzzle piece to drag it to its appropriate place on the map. When he’s done, he’ll be able to see the amount of time it took him to complete the puzzle on the screen. He can then start over if he wants to, or he can go on to select a different map. You don’t have to download anything to use these map puzzles, but there are links for map puzzles you can download, install, and use on computers without an Internet connection.

Content and Safety: I didn’t find anything inappropriate on the Maps that Teach web page. There are some Google pay-per-click ads, but they all appear to point to other educational resources.

Nicole’s Experience Using the Product: My children have expressed an interest in learning about Asia, so I printed a labeled and unlabeled map of Asia for each of my daughters. As we read about each part of Asia, we found the region on the labeled map and colored it in. Then, before we moved on to learn about the next region, I asked each child to try to label the region we just covered without looking at the labeled map. I even got my four year old son involved by pulling up a United States map and pointing out the state in which we live, as well as some of the states we’ve visited.

We also tried out the puzzle maps. Here’s a screenshot of a puzzle my 9 year old did of the USA.

Here’s one my 14 year old did of Asia.

Summary: I think Maps that Teach is a great resource for homeschoolers. It can be used with children from preschool age right up through college. Even parents may want to use these maps for brushing up on their knowledge of geography!

Editor’s Note: Check out these other FREE Map tools:
Take a virtual tour of the Interactive Maps of the World (Field Museum, Chicago)
Free 3D photos of U.S. National Parks, virtal tours, and more!