Mapa Mundial... Almost

I recently began the first steps of the construction of a world map project here in Poroto. In order to help orient the youth to their place in the world and further knowledge about foreign cultures and geography, I’ll be working with youth to paint a huge map on a wall in the school. I invited various students to participate in the creation of this map, and I was quite surprised with the response. Word spread quickly and I had about 30 kids show up to help begin the map. I was only expecting about 10, so I had to think quickly about how to entertain and engage that many kids in a project that really only needed about 5. I began with an introductory geography lesson to guage their knowledge, which affirmed the need for a geography-based project. (No, I’m sorry… the United States isn’t China and Europe isn’t Australia). Following this, I assigned each child a different task to prepare for the painting of the map- practicing drawing from a grid using sidewalk chalk, learning the countries of South America, cleaning the wall, and eventually deciding the measurements for our own map. We decided to paint a map that will be 12x6 feet, which is a fairly impressive size. Centering the rectangle and painting the initial background proved to be a project in itself, especially with a bunch of overly excited kids.

In order to accurately paint the world map, a grid system is used to help transcribe a small version of a world map to an enormous replica. This sounds simple enough, but even just drawing the lines to form the grid was a feat. I wanted the kids to have their hands in every step of the project, which also included them measuring the distance between lines to form a straight grid. You can probably imagine how that went… We finally finished our grid lines hours and hours after beginning and the whole grid looked a little uneven. Personally, I’m more of a “big picture” person, so erasing and redrawing pencil lines on a 12x6 foot map was not my idea of fun. About 10 erasers later, we managed to produce a fairly straight grid that was ready for the replication of our map.

However, I have since been informed that the building where I was hoping to do my map may be knocked down and reconstructed in the upcoming months, so this project is currently on hold.