Next step on the US history timeline is Christopher Columbus. Christopher Columbus was an Italian but he explored under the Spanish flag because they were the only ones who would fund his crazy idea to find a fast route to India. He may not have been the first in North America, but he is often credited with discovering the “New World”.
Christopher Columbus tried his hand at many things but foremost he was a navigator and map maker. With this information, we decided that for our fun project, we would make old “New World” maps.
For our ‘aged’ maps, we used Brown Kraft Paper Roll, but if you have some brown paper shopping bags, those would work as well. We looked at a world map to see what they thought Europe and North America looked like back then. A reminder that the whole area was not explored so a general shape was fine. They had discovered the Canary Islands and the Caribbean islands, so we made sure to include those.
They colored their maps and Evie labeled hers and I did the littles. I also created a template for three little ships. They colored those and then they were labeled the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria for Christopher Columbus’ ships from his first voyage. They cut those out (well, I cut for the little!) and they glued it to their oceans.
To add to the old map look, I lit a candle and let them tell me where to burn the edges. Make sure to blow out quickly or you risk it burning too far into the map. You want the burns to stay close to the edge to show wear and tear. Its frayed edges made it look even older and cooler, I think.
During our projects, we read about a pair of siblings who traveled from Spain to the New World. It included a lot of excitement but also things that were scary, like storms. To add to our map, I decided that Evie could write one journal entry with a focus on feelings if she was on a ship coming to this new unknown world or dealing with some big event. She picked a storm to happen in the ocean which would have been something that many dealt with. Instead of writing on a plain piece of paper, I printed a scroll template to match our map.
We attached this journal entry to the back of our map and now we have a cool-looking artifact! We also got to try our hand at map making and putting ourselves in the shoes of a pioneer child.