National Geographic Traveling Map on Display at Hillview Crest Elementary

From Kathy Miedema, parent volunteer for New Haven Unified School District:

Hillview Crest Students head for high seas with help from Giant Traveling Map

The Pacific Ocean is the star this week at Hillview Crest elementary school, where a giant map of the planet’s largest ocean is available for lessons and activities with students.

This vinyl, 26-foot by 35-foot map allows students to hop around from Alaska’s Aleutian Islands to the Panama Canal to New Zealand to Union City – all in their stocking feet.

The map is part of a National Geographic program that introduces more than 300,000 students a year in grades K-8 to geography and map reading skills.

The feet-on program has been traveling to schools around the Bay Area during the 2011-12 school year. Oracle Corp. is sponsoring the map’s appearance at schools attended by the children of Oracle employees. Oracle, based in Redwood Shores,  Calif., is a global software and hardware company.

A space large enough to accommodate the map, which is about half the size of a basketball court, proved to be a bit of a challenge. The maps most often find a home in the school auditorium. But at Hillview Crest, that’s where the students eat lunch every day. The floor of the classroom housing the Pacific Ocean map for the week is almost completely covered. But that’s not stopping the students from enjoying games and other learning activities on the map, which are provided in a series of lesson plans for teachers along with a trunk of props.

For more information on Giant Traveling Maps program, including how to reserve one for your own school, check National Geographic’s special events page online.