Why It’s Important to Teach Kids How to Use Maps

The next time you’re on a family travel road trip — even a short one — try giving your kids an old-fashioned paper road map. If you don’t have one, your nearest visitor center will likely have highway maps for your state. Show them where you are and where you are going, and suggest they follow along on the map as you travel.

Maps are fun for kids and give them a visible picture of their environment and the relative locations and distances of both new and familiar places. But the ability to read maps is also a lifelong skill with many other benefits.

Looking at maps gives kids a sense of what their state, country and places they travel look like —  how big everything is, and where the mountains, rivers and lakes are. Even if they use GPS, it’s a visual recognition that puts the little sections they see on their phone screens into a larger perspective. Maps are also better for overall travel planning, showing comparative distances at a glance. You get the whole picture, not just to the next intersection.

Beyond its useful function while traveling, map reading is a valuable tool for developing a child’s spatial reasoning by helping them visualize where neighborhoods, places, cities and countries are in relation to each other. Maps help them understand where they are in the world and encourage their curiosity about the world.

Understanding and using maps can be handy even in the world of GPS. Hikers know many trails are beyond satellite navigation range, which is why they use detailed hiking maps such as those published by the Appalachian Mountain Club. These have the added benefit of contour markings showing how steep a trail is — another whole facet of maps that will fascinate older kids.

As kids progress in school, maps are a key to understanding history and current world events. Where are the Gaza Strip and Ukraine? Why might their geographical locations be important in the greater context of conflict?

Even children too young to read can understand maps because they are more visual than printed words. Several pre-school and primary level books introduce maps and even help kids to create their own; National Geographic is also a good source for mapping tools and activities. Once kids have become fascinated with maps, a map collecting starter kit can be the start of a lifelong hobby.