Teaching geography step 1: Find globe

[LadyShea]

I can't believe I didn't tell this story. Anyway, Kiddo doesn't get geography, or maps, or distances or political boundaries. I have provided him with things and explained things, but can't seem to find the right hook or starting point or something because he is all "what?". Maybe all kids are like this at this age and nobody notices but me, or maybe they all know and just didn't tell me, or maybe he is geographically disabled, I dunno but it's really hard to explain stuff.

So he asks if North Korea is in America and I decide he needs a globe. We stop at WalMart and can't find any so I ask a lady if they have globes and her answer... "What's that?" .

Turns out nobody in town carries them, and all the apps I can find are games that require some basic knowledge (which I did good on) or Google Earth...good enough for now, but I am going to order him a real one.

Anyway, how do I break this down in order to teach it coherently? Any ideas?

[livius drusus]

I had several large National Geographic centerfold maps on my wall when I was in elementary school. Without even realizing it I picked up a lot of geography just from hanging out in my room.

[LadyShea]

The world map didn't make sense to him....because it's flat. It was seriously the most frustrating educational discussion we've ever had together. He really wants to understand, and tried so hard, but after half an hour he still didn't get that continents, countries, states are all different.

[Crumb]

No globes in town?!

[Crumb]

Maybe constructing his own globe or maps from Google Earth or something, if he is a hands on kinda guy.

[But]

Did you know that the earth is approximately flat? A disc, in essence? Walk along the horizon and you'll notice. The horizon is a "tangential plane". In any number of dimensions. It's a single path. Nothing but frequencies and phase shifts. And a lot of CNOT gates.

[livius drusus]

You could always make your own globe. Crafts make learning feel like fun.

I had a conversation with a little girl once who didn't understand that cities were inside countries inside continents etc. She asked me if it was true that I was American and if so did I know her uncle who lives in America. I asked her where in America he lived, explaining about the states and the towns inside of them. She had no idea what I was talking about. She went in to ask her parents where her uncle lived and returned triumphantly with the answer: "South America!"

It found it fascinating because I didn't realize or remember from my own childhood that the concept had to be learned. She was around five as I recall, but I didn't really know her so I can't say for sure.

[But]

It's approximately the line that separates water from air. Earth from water. Earth from air. Earth from Space. Any two symbols from one another. Basically, the universal delta function, or the measurement apparatus that measures everything.

[But]

Where did all the Indians go? The same way the Native Americans went. Along the horizon.

[Crumb]

If he is having trouble with how maps in general can represent a real place you could have him map your yard, or map the neighborhood and routes that he is familiar with like the way to the park or friend's house, or whatever.

[But]

Everything that goes around a conic section one way follows a slightly different path back on a cross-section of a slightly different light cone.

[But]

Paths can cross, recombine and interfere with one another. With negative probabilities and complex amplitudes. The sum over all paths is approximately zero, as written down in the Wheeler-DeWitt equation. This is the path integral over all paths.

[But]

Originally Posted by livius drusus

You could always make your own globe. Crafts make learning feel like fun.

I had a conversation with a little girl once who didn't understand that cities were inside countries inside continents etc. She asked me if it was true that I was American and if so did I know her uncle who lives in America. I asked her where in America he lived, explaining about the states and the towns inside of them. She had no idea what I was talking about. She went in to ask her parents where her uncle lived and returned triumphantly with the answer: "South America!"

It found it fascinating because I didn't realize or remember from my own childhood that the concept had to be learned. She was around five as I recall, but I didn't really know her so I can't say for sure.

I read somewhere once that the people on the coast couldn't grasp the concept of a big ship with guns or something. Not true. All they saw was some fucked up idiots in a really big sailing boat. They probably thought "What are those morons doing? Driving around in a sailing boat? What do they want? Hello, yes? Peace? And pepper? Huh? Yes, we have.. uh.. beans and thingies and yes, edible, good, the sand is also yellow" But the other guys were just religious fucknuts doing the same shit they always do. Go somewhere and cause trouble over there. Because they were forced by some idiot called "Cristobal Colonel" or something to jerk off together all the time. In a big shithouse. On water. Or something.

Interpretation over

[Ari]

The full extent of our round world never made sense to me as a kid until playing with it.
I had something similar to Hugg a planet growing up (yes with the poorly cut out drop shadow and everything!)

[lisarea]

When TLM needed a globe, we went to a globe store in Denver and picked one out.

I'm pretty big on 3D models and stuff. It's just easier to grasp quickly how things are related to each other spatially if you can look at a globe and spin it around and stuff instead of trying to parse things to a flat map. Plus globes are furniture, so you have a scale model of the earth just sitting in your room all the time, like ambient information.

You can get a serviceable one online for like $20.

[But]

Continuation of the above story: They had three ships or something shit like that, all named after women, which together with the big long shitcirclefest led to the problem that they threw their shit overboard, didn't recycle their own waste, were so horny from all the shitwanking that they had to piss off some strong horny soldiers on the beach for no particular reason. By admiring their women's public beach tits. Moral of the story: Shit on a stick.

[But]

Originally Posted by lisarea

You can get a serviceable one online for like $20.

You can just dust off already existing ones, laugh at the old borders, and take a big leap of shit on all of them. It's called an ass bomb, if you understand German. LOL.

[But]

That's what the guys did with Jericho. Walk around the wall screaming mad songs with trumpets and poisonous posauns until the shitheads inside get so infected by the madness that they started reinforcing their wall in the wrong way, so wrong that even archaeologists reconstruct afterwards that the bloody thing didn't even have a wall at all.

[lisarea]

I have a globe in the living room that's from like 1950 or something, and a while back, a friend of mine wanted to borrow it or something for her kid, and I was like LOL NO, even though that would have been sort of hilarious.

Also, German is just English, but you say it more angry.

[But]

Oh yes, and I'm spamming the forum, LIV. Make me.

[But]

The only way you atheists will believe in miracles is when I start waterskiing in slow motion because I now understand quantum mechanics and everything. That's when all the shit starts to explode. 42 is the question, by the way. LOL. Did you know that?

[But]

But only after a good night's sleep, when all my genome is recombined. Let me just tell me one last thing. I know the big Yo, ey, wow, ey.

[Kyuss Apollo]

You could also show Kiddo these videos; might help put the concept into something more concrete.

Plane Take Off - Inside View - YouTube

Space Shuttle Launch: Viewed From an Airplane -...

Lockheed U-2 Flight - 70,000ft (2 Seat TU-2...

The View from Space - Countries and Coastlines -...

[Ensign Steve]

I remember learning how to read maps on road trips. I would get so bored and I'd pass the time figuring out how much farther till our next pit stop or final destination, and what's on the way. I learned all the features of the map like the legend, scale, the grid, contour lines, and I learned California bottom to top and back about a hundred times. It's sort of easy, though, the ocean is west.

Later I had two big maps up in my room as posters, one of the USA and one of the world. Nerd alert, I swear to god I picked them out myself at the bookstore.

Also, get a globe! Even just to spin it around and play airplanes or superman or space shuttle off of. I never did but now I wish I had.

[LadyShea]

Well, I used Google Earth with the starting point right above our house and slowly pulled out to show the neighborhood, the school, the water, the state, etc. This seemed a good "here is how maps work". It went well. Then for fun we found the Coliseum in Rome