Map Collecting: A Good Travel Hobby for Children

Map collecting is a hobby for all ages and budgets, and an especially good one for family travelers. Once they’re turned on to maps, even young kids can follow routes as you drive or make their own maps of their neighborhood. While serious collectors can spend a lot to score rare antique maps, beginners and kids can start a collection at little or no cost.

Even in these days of GPS, nearly every tourist office has free maps, some illustrated with landmarks or pictures of attractions. Kids can find free maps of cities, neighborhoods, Metro lines, bike and hiking trails, ski trails, and entire countries. Travel magazines often have illustrated maps, and even some antique maps, often removed from century-old guidebooks, are available at reasonable prices.

Maps can be framed, pinned on collages to decorate walls, displayed with postcards or photos from a trip, stored in scrapbooks or used to plan their next adventures. Large maps, such as the beautifully illustrated National Geographic maps, are popular used alone as wall decorations.

A good way to get kids interested is with the Kids’ Starter Map Collecting Kit, featuring a selection of 50 vintage and contemporary maps from around the world. These include examples of various map types, such as city street maps; driving maps; walking tour maps; illustrated maps; topographical maps; National Geographic maps; and maps from guidebooks, magazines and travel brochures. They range in age from the 1920s to the present and include at least one antique map from the early 20^th century. The kit also includes acid-free archival paper for storing antique maps and graph paper so kids can try map-making themselves.

Parents interested in starting their own map collection can find reasonably priced antique Baedeker maps from the late 1800s and early 1900s, plus other vintage maps priced as low as $10 at Edna’s Maperie & Ephemera. For historical and rare maps, Boston Rare Maps is a reliable source.

Children aged 8–12 will enjoy All About Maps Amazing Activity Book: Fun Facts, Mazes, Games, and Brain Teasers by Paola Misesti, filled with geography puzzles, stickers, and instructions for how to read maps and how kids can make their own compass.