Compass Hide-and-Seek

We've just finished our economics unit and now we are off in a whole new direction. Maps, maps, and more maps! I began by teaching the basic cardinal directions. I have a little chant that we do as we clap our hands outstretched in each direction: North, South, East, and West, These are what we know the best! I also thought of something new this year that I wanted to share. It was something I had never done but my students had such a good time with it. We played cardinal directions hide and seek. I cut colored note cards in half and together we made our very own, genuine compass. I showed them some pictures of basic compasses on the computer. They all wrote the cardinal directions on the blank side of their card and their name on the back. Some of my students made theirs look fancier but my model looked like this:

We very briefly discussed intermediate directions but not in depth since I only teach first grade.Every time I teach directions my students tend to grasp North and South pretty quickly but East and West are always confusing to them. In order to help with this, I had everyone get in line with their compass and told them that different rooms in the school were hiding and it was our job to figure out which directions we had to go in order to find them. Whenever we got to a dead end or "stop sign" in our school I had all of the students whisper to me in line which direction we had to go next to get wherever we were going. When you do this, your trip will mainly consist of East and West which gives your students tons of practice. I made it so that our final destination was the lunch room and I made sure to collect all of their compasses before they entered the lunch room doors. The students loved walking around and checking their compasses. They keep asking to play again so we might use them on the way to specials next week. We will see how much they remember. Hopefully this is something you can use too! I hope you have a great week (:

-OneCrazyS