This blog is not new, it was offline and updated with a new image.  

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Map skills.  Yep, that is the topic of this new blog.  Plain. Simple. Basic map skills. The kind you learn in third grade when the teacher points to a place on the wall sized classroom map .  Remember?  She/he then will ask where  is your school located? This then proceeds to a lively interactive lesson where each student takes turn pointing to where they were born, traveled and more!   Some lucky kids may even get to point outside of the contiguous United States.  Some teachers even asked kids to use all their colored pencils to draw maps and more! Gosh I loved map skills day!

Now keep in mind… many of the maps looked like the one above. How many third graders grew up thinking that Alaska and Hawaii were so close together and near Texas or even Mexico? Isn’t Alaska close to Russia?

Now you may be wondering why I am perseverating on map skills .  Well, quite simply it all started with a conversation between hubby, a sales clerk from a box store and myself. You see hubby and I are in the throes of moving from metro DC to metro LA. (What can I say- we like the metro- life…sorta).  Anyway- we decided to go shopping for a washer and dryer since the new digs doesn’t come equipped and I am long past laundry mat days.  While in the box store the nice sales clerk told us all about the “in store specials”. However, when we pointed out that our items were probably going to be purchased in our new home state of CALIFORNIA this was how the rest of the conversation continued:

Sales clerk:  “Electric across country may be different than we use here in Maryland.”
Hubby:   “We are only going to California“

Sales clerk:” They may use a different kind of electric, like you know voltage.“

Me: (Using my inside my head voice)… Seriously, we need to pull out a map and have a bit of a lesson about what constitutes the United States!

Now just in case you are wondering here are a few helpful facts….

California has been part of the United States since September 1850

Electric in New York, Maryland, Iowa and even California is the SAME.

According to the CA.gov website… More than 13,000 of California’s wind turbines, or 95 percent of all of California’s wind generating capacity and output, are located in three primary regions: Altamont Pass , Tehachapi (south east of Bakersfield) and San Gorgonio (near Palm Springs, east of Los Angeles).  

And… according to an educational website 37% of United States citizens failed to find the United States on a basic world map.

Obviously, map skills need to continue beyond the third grade.  Next week maybe we will discuss basic life skills, like balancing a check book or knowing how to sew a basic hem.

map courtesy of google