Treasure Maps

Continuing with our Pirate theme, we made treasure maps today! I will show you mine first, then the kids'. I tore the edges of off-white paper to give it an aged look. Then I used crayons to make water and land and different "obstacles" like sharks and volcanoes. I included a little direction symbol in the corner and drew a dotted line with an X to "mark the spot."

I had printed out labels for the maps: Shark-Infested Waters, Snake Island, Volcano Valley, and Crocodile Creek. I wanted to keep it simple and the kids would be able to draw these things with basic triangles and squiggly lines. But before adding the labels, I crumpled up my map and smoothed it out again. Then I used a glue stick to add the labels.

To make it even easier for the kids, I drew pictures on little paper plates so the kids would know what the labels said.

That way I wouldn't have to answer the question, "What does this say?" over and over again. (Okay, so maybe I did this to make it easier on me, not the kids!) Then it was their turn. First they colored:

Then they crumpled and glued on the labels:

I tried to get each kid to make a cross with an N on top for North, and to make some sort of line with an X at the end. Other than that, they could color whatever they wanted.

They did a great job! The younger kids had a bit of trouble drawing pictures, but they had fun and their maps looked cool anyway!

We didn't make pirate ships this week because we made them for our transportation theme last fall.

Found out how we made them here!