Read "Me on the Map" by Joan Sweeney. After reading the story, revisit the map of the girl's room. Invite students to share what they notice. The girl drew her bed, rugs, a dresser, a chair and even her cat. Provide paper and crayons for students to draw their own bedrooms. Encourage students to add details to their maps. Provide time for students to share their maps with the class.
Send a letter home asking kindergarteners to make a map of their street with their family. The map might include just a few houses on their street or the entire block with the park on the corner. Have students bring maps to school to share. As students share their maps, pose relative location questions for the class to answer. For example, "What color is the house to the left of Tyler's house?" or "What is near Ashley's house on her map?"
Invite kindergarteners to build their own kindergarten town. Provide small boxes, empty school lunch milk cartons, markers, construction paper and glue. Divide students into groups of four and give each group a piece of chart paper. Invite students to create a map of a pretend neighborhood. Students may glue down milk cartons for houses and small boxes for schools, stores, fire stations and other buildings. Encourage students to use construction paper and markers to add roads, train tracks, rivers or trees. When students finish maps of their neighborhood, join maps together to make a kindergarten town.
Display a large map of the world on the board. Read the names of continents and oceans for kindergarteners. Provide magazines for students to cut out pictures of animals. Allow students to print out pictures of their favorite wild animals. As a class, look at each picture and locate where that animal lives on the world map. Invite students to tape pictures of their animals on the map so you have zebras and lions in Africa, penguins in Antarctica, whales in the oceans and kangaroos in Australia.