On the Map

  We had a pretty rockin' Family Heritage Day today, if I do say so myself! Kids set up stations with their information, posters, even food, and the other kids rotated around to learn about the countries, traditions, and foods of their heritage. It was a big day for our class, but possibly an even bigger day for The Pillow.
  Over the summer, in one of my many summer trips to the fabric store, I came across a bolt of fabric maps of the world! I immediately hatched a plan to make a giant pillow for the classroom out of Botswana and Peru and, well, all of them, and grabbed a cartoony fabric map of the US for the pillow's back. I knew it would be my absolute favorite thing in my classroom (well, aside from the little baby tampons), and indeed it has been pretty great--comfort in the library and ha! learning, all in one.
  However, until our study of world cultures began a couple of weeks ago, The Pillow had been used exclusively for the comfier of its two functions.
Today The Pillow got a chance to shine. I put it out on the rug along with a Heritage Day challenge for that moment when the roaming from station to station got old and the kids had eaten as much Irish soda bread as they could, and the only thing left was to devolve into chaos. Before that devolving, though, they had to complete a few questions about the countries represented at our celebration, and then locate as many of the countries as they could on the giant, squishy world map. Geography has never been more cozy.