I need a good motivation/introduction for a unit on the seven continents (second grade)

[suem]

I don't like the standard either, seems so boring. I would (I don't teach it much) read similar fairy tales from the different continents. I know there is a ton of Cinderella stories and I think there are several Little Red Riding Hood stories too. The children love to hear stories and when you read them you can show the continents and tell them how the land and people are, so hopefully then can conclude the stories are different because things are different on that continent.

[apple annie]

My kids combine recess with memorizing the continent names. While they jump rope, they chant the continents in this order: North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, Antarctica. If you say one on every jump, the rhythm works and it's easy to memorize. After we do that a couple of days, they have to come to the map and say the chant and point to the right one. If they can do it, I give them a mini-candy bar. Of course that's just to locate and memorize them, but it's a good beginning.

[1gr81ntheus]

You could read that story and liken finding the continents to finding shapes in the clouds. Same concept but on paper. If you can show them the shape of the continents then they could try to find the shapes on a map.

[Suezie]

My students had fun playing this game on the smart board:

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ng...t/copycat.html

They didn't realize that they were memorizing the continents when they watched a peer play and they shouted out which continent the person had to touch.

If you do have a smart board, you could use the world map in the gallery and the clips of each continent that fit onto the map (they drop into place when you drag them over the map.)

I also googled "continent songs" and came up with this page:
http://teachers.net/gazette/DEC02/continents.html

Here's a web quest I founbd. I've not used it byt you m ight try it out or use bits of it.
http://www.lvusd.k12.ca.us/whiteoaksite/whiteoak/Maxwell/continents.htm

[wilmart77]

A fellow teacher taught her 1st graders, which in turn taught me as their 3rd grade teacher, the following:

Mr. North America married Mrs. South America.
They went on a honeymoon to Europe.
In time they had 4 child whose names all started with an "A"; Asia, Africa, Australia and Antarctica.

Try it with your kids and see if this might help.

MAH

[donna]

There is a book I use called Chester the Worldly Pig by Bill Peet. It has a surprise ending the kids really enjoy.

[pinkjuice]

My students LOVE looking at maps. Perhaps each child could put together their own "puzzle" map of the world?

They could label individual continents and cut them out (rounded!) then glue the map together by observing another map.

Perhaps your class could involve other geographic locations by writing in cities/countries that your class has learned aobut/read about/ are from/ etc. on the map later.