Montessori Geography: Continent Boxes

Geography is one of my favorite subjects. The far off places, exotic foods, interesting names, cultures that are so different from my own, it all appeals to me. I may not have been able to travel the world yet, but I do so love learning about it. And I aim to have my children love it too. That’s why we’re starting our school year with continent boxes, specifically a North America Continent Box. My hope is to cover one continent each month of the upcoming year using these boxes as a primary jumping off point for learning.

In a Montessori children’s house you will find some version of these, whether it’s a box or a bag or a set of shelves- there will be a dedicated space to each of the continents. These continent boxes are a treasure trove of knowledge, and one of my favorite pieces of a Montessori curriculum. They work in parallel with puzzle maps to ensure that children are learning both physical and cultural geography.

Side note: Puzzle maps are beautiful and wonderful, but if you can’t afford them (like us, hello resident salary!), Mobile Montessori makes a great puzzle map of the world app to get you started, and they have been expanding to add the continents as well. I love when technology can bridge gaps, don’t you?

Anyhoo, back to continent boxes. . . The purpose of a continent box is not to teach the child everything, but rather to spark their curiosity and send them looking for more. To do this they often contain some items like the following:

• Currency: Coins and small bills from different countries make for interesting conversation about money, and often contain images of cultural importance to the country they are from. If you have any friends or family who travel, have them save a few small pieces of local currency for you to add to your collection.
• Pictures: Whether they’re photos you took yourself, postcards from family members who travel, or printed off the internet, images of important places and events from throughout the continent are perfect for visual learners.
• Small animal figures: Thankfully my wonderful mother-in-law has subsidized our continent boxes, and has purchased the kids a slew of small animal figures to go along with information cards. Holding and touching the animals, looking at their features, talking about how they’re adapted to their habitat, is one of my kids’ favorite aspects of the continent box.
• Maps: We’ve got road maps of countries and maps of cities, and the kids love them all.
• Small Objects: Whenever we have friends or family travel anywhere, I always ask them to pick up something small for our continent boxes. In the Europe box is a tiny ceramic tulip from Aunt Paxton’s trip to Denmark, in North America we have a tiny woven cloth from their grandparent’s trip to Guatemala (and tons of other tiny items from vacations around the US).
• A Book or Two: I personally like the books from this set as they are simple and full of facts.
• 3 Part Cards: I like adding cards of landmarks and animals. Some of our boxes have musical instruments and fun facts as well. If I don’t have the time to make my own, I always go right to Montessori Print Shop.

A continent box is a starting point for exploration, and I love going where my kids lead. Alongside the boxes, I’ve been creating resources for G to use as she learns. These are sets of fill in the blank style “reports” designed because she’s an early writer. She can practice her handwriting on real work, which she far prefers to handwriting pages of letter after letter in sequence. I think she’ll have a lot of find reading about different animals, landmarks, and countries, and writing her own report. You can find some of the reports I’ve already created over at Teachers Pay Teachers. I’ll do my best to update as more are created.

My plan is to have her create her own little book with information about the continent that she learns, using the reports and maps she’s colored and traced, alongside some country names handwriting pages that will become part of the continent box for when her younger siblings use it.