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Post by silverdragon on Nov 2, 2015 10:25:21 GMT
This is a game I played with my Kids once or twice when they were younger.
Myth is that Kids can NOT do this....[busted already by me but worth consideration...]
[as in, I dont believe my kids are genious enough to be the only kids who can do this...]
My Kids were about 10 when I started doing this.
We were in Glasgow, the city of my Wife's family, and have been there often enough that the kids have some idea, but not a good idea of where they are....
The game is, I tell them where I want to go, and ask them to get me there.
First one to find the map gets to navigate....
This is done on the drive of one of the family, so they can search the car in safety.
Once in the passenger seat (Wife takes back seat for the trip) they have to predict where we are and where we want to go, find both on the map, then tell me how to get there, navigating all the information on the map.
My kids know how to read maps. I taught them. Its not school curriculum, and I want to know why not, but this is one of the reasons my kids at Ten said they learn more at home than the average day at school....
They know symbols, signs, "road-craft", and can tell a one-way street and a blocked street by the map.
The directions are studied before we leave, and an agreed route.... by both the "things" and me.
If you have kids that can map-read, try this, its much more satisfying than "Are we there yet".
Advanced
Try letting them plan the route with no advice at all, and let them navigate out of the situation they get you into, like relying on being able to drive down one street I already knew had been pedestrianised....
Pay-off, I can now get my Kids to map read when we are out in places I dont normally take a truck.
"Find me a car park near the sea front not too far to walk"....
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Post by GTCGreg on Nov 2, 2015 13:11:55 GMT
Maps? What are those? Kids today would just reach for their cell phones. They wouldn't tell you how to get out of town, they'd let their GPS give you voice directions.
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Post by the light works on Nov 2, 2015 15:31:12 GMT
as Greg says. the navigational participation I had from the nieces on the yellowstone trip last year was that on return I solicited advice on routes back INTO town so as to avoid tailbacks. - they all have their phones programmed with traffic monitoring apps.
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Post by silverdragon on Nov 3, 2015 7:16:37 GMT
Ban the phones....?..
This exercise is teaching them maps, "Old school", for places where their phones dont get any signal?...
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Post by OziRiS on Nov 16, 2015 11:26:00 GMT
As mentioned in the "Favorite photos" thread, I did this with Boy about a month or two ago. He was home sick from school and they'd been doing coordinate systems in math class, so I thought I'd give him some real world insight into just one of the things coordinate systems are used for and broke out a military map I had lying around.
When he'd grasped how it worked, we made a deal that when he was feeling better, we'd go for a drive where he'd decide on the route and navigate us there by map.
He did extremely well (not to mention found it very entertaining) and he's only 9. With a little more practice, I'm sure he'd be able to navigate us all the way to a hotel in southern Italy and back again by map and compass alone.
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Post by GTCGreg on Nov 16, 2015 15:14:59 GMT
Ban the phones....?.. This exercise is teaching them maps, "Old school", for places where their phones dont get any signal?... "Old School"? How about a sextant and star charts. |
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Post by the light works on Nov 16, 2015 15:38:35 GMT
As mentioned in the "Favorite photos" thread, I did this with Boy about a month or two ago. He was home sick from school and they'd been doing coordinate systems in math class, so I thought I'd give him some real world insight into just one of the things coordinate systems are used for and broke out a military map I had lying around. When he'd grasped how it worked, we made a deal that when he was feeling better, we'd go for a drive where he'd decide on the route and navigate us there by map. He did extremely well (not to mention found it very entertaining) and he's only 9. With a little more practice, I'm sure he'd be able to navigate us all the way to a hotel in southern Italy and back again by map and compass alone. unless you're going cross-country (as in without roads) he should be able to navigate without the compass. |
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Post by OziRiS on Nov 16, 2015 21:12:07 GMT
As mentioned in the "Favorite photos" thread, I did this with Boy about a month or two ago. He was home sick from school and they'd been doing coordinate systems in math class, so I thought I'd give him some real world insight into just one of the things coordinate systems are used for and broke out a military map I had lying around. When he'd grasped how it worked, we made a deal that when he was feeling better, we'd go for a drive where he'd decide on the route and navigate us there by map. He did extremely well (not to mention found it very entertaining) and he's only 9. With a little more practice, I'm sure he'd be able to navigate us all the way to a hotel in southern Italy and back again by map and compass alone. unless you're going cross-country (as in without roads) he should be able to navigate without the compass. Sure, but it helps to point the map North before you start navigating, or you might find after a while that you're going West when you should have gone South. That's what the compass is there for. |
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Post by the light works on Nov 17, 2015 5:27:31 GMT
unless you're going cross-country (as in without roads) he should be able to navigate without the compass. Sure, but it helps to point the map North before you start navigating, or you might find after a while that you're going West when you should have gone South. That's what the compass is there for. standing at the end of my driveway, the river runs to my right more than it runs to my left, so that means the ocean is on my right - so west is to my right and north is behind me. - roughly speaking. |
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Post by OziRiS on Nov 17, 2015 11:08:08 GMT
Sure, but it helps to point the map North before you start navigating, or you might find after a while that you're going West when you should have gone South. That's what the compass is there for. standing at the end of my driveway, the river runs to my right more than it runs to my left, so that means the ocean is on my right - so west is to my right and north is behind me. - roughly speaking. As long as you know what hemisphere you're in and you know what time it is, you can roughly estimate North by the Sun as well, since in summer it rises in the Northeast and sets in the Southwest and in the winter it rises in the Southeast and sets in the Northwest. If you're close to the ocean, you can also go by the way the trees slant because of the prevailing winds. If you're close to the West coast, the trees will slant East and vice verca. They'll do this even a good 50 miles inland if the terrain is flat enough. There are many ways to tell which way is North and I'm planning on teaching Boy each and every one I know, but a compass is still the most reliable one. |
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Post by the light works on Nov 17, 2015 14:52:15 GMT
standing at the end of my driveway, the river runs to my right more than it runs to my left, so that means the ocean is on my right - so west is to my right and north is behind me. - roughly speaking. As long as you know what hemisphere you're in and you know what time it is, you can roughly estimate North by the Sun as well, since in summer it rises in the Northeast and sets in the Southwest and in the winter it rises in the Southeast and sets in the Northwest. If you're close to the ocean, you can also go by the way the trees slant because of the prevailing winds. If you're close to the West coast, the trees will slant East and vice verca. They'll do this even a good 50 miles inland if the terrain is flat enough. There are many ways to tell which way is North and I'm planning on teaching Boy each and every one I know, but a compass is still the most reliable one. add that to the fact I know I turn right out of my driveway to go generally west, of course. my point was if you go by road, it behooves a person to always be aware of where you are on the map. if you suddenly find yourself in a strange spot and don;t know how you got there, then yes, you have to start from scratch - but if you know where you are then a compass should be redundant. |
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Post by OziRiS on Nov 17, 2015 15:00:24 GMT
As long as you know what hemisphere you're in and you know what time it is, you can roughly estimate North by the Sun as well, since in summer it rises in the Northeast and sets in the Southwest and in the winter it rises in the Southeast and sets in the Northwest. If you're close to the ocean, you can also go by the way the trees slant because of the prevailing winds. If you're close to the West coast, the trees will slant East and vice verca. They'll do this even a good 50 miles inland if the terrain is flat enough. There are many ways to tell which way is North and I'm planning on teaching Boy each and every one I know, but a compass is still the most reliable one. add that to the fact I know I turn right out of my driveway to go generally west, of course. my point was if you go by road, it behooves a person to always be aware of where you are on the map. if you suddenly find yourself in a strange spot and don;t know how you got there, then yes, you have to start from scratch - but if you know where you are then a compass should be redundant. It's true that most times you can just align the map with the roads and other things around you, but when we set out for our trip, our starting point was the side of a long East/West bound road with few other distinguishing features. I knew which way was which, but Boy didn't, so the compass helped him figure out which way to turn the map, so we started in the right direction and wouldn't have to turn back once we hit something that didn't fit with the map. |
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Post by the light works on Nov 17, 2015 15:09:01 GMT
add that to the fact I know I turn right out of my driveway to go generally west, of course. my point was if you go by road, it behooves a person to always be aware of where you are on the map. if you suddenly find yourself in a strange spot and don;t know how you got there, then yes, you have to start from scratch - but if you know where you are then a compass should be redundant. It's true that most times you can just align the map with the roads and other things around you, but when we set out for our trip, our starting point was the side of a long East/West bound road with few other distinguishing features. I knew which way was which, but Boy didn't, so the compass helped him figure out which way to turn the map, so we started in the right direction and wouldn't have to turn back once we hit something that didn't fit with the map. ah. that makes sense then. |
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Post by GTCGreg on Nov 17, 2015 18:08:03 GMT
It's true that most times you can just align the map with the roads and other things around you, but when we set out for our trip, our starting point was the side of a long East/West bound road with few other distinguishing features. I knew which way was which, but Boy didn't, so the compass helped him figure out which way to turn the map, so we started in the right direction and wouldn't have to turn back once we hit something that didn't fit with the map. ah. that makes sense then. You can have the same problem with a gps. If you really don't have a clue which way you are pointing and first turn on your gps, it doesn't know either. It will show you a map of where you are but doesn't know how to orientate that map until you start moving. Once you are moving, it can figure out what direction you are heading and rotates the map correctly. |
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Post by OziRiS on Nov 17, 2015 19:41:48 GMT
ah. that makes sense then. You can have the same problem with a gps. If you really don't have a clue which way you are pointing and first turn on your gps, it doesn't know either. It will show you a map of where you are but doesn't know how to orientate that map until you start moving. Once you are moving, it can figure out what direction you are heading and rotates the map correctly. I've started off in the wrong direction on more than one occasion because of that. When I set out from somewhere I'm not familiar with, if at all possible, I'll start by backing the car back into the driveway/parking space I'm starting from to give the GPS a sense of direction when I start rolling forward again. It usually only takes 15-30 feet if it's got a good signal. |
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Post by silverdragon on Nov 18, 2015 9:40:35 GMT
Standard operating procedure is to point the map north.
Yeah, fine, get your north and south sorted out...
But then to INSIST the map stays the right way up?...
What you going to do now?.. walk round the map?.. and if you are holding it, how you do that then?..
I am advanced on map reading, I know that, I had the skills from being about aged 10 and doing the Mountain Leadership course, and self navigating to D-of-E Gold standard, and then on into the Peak Park Rangers.
I can read maps upside down, I can also transfer knowledge of what I see on a map in any orientation to real-world, so can not only read a map upside down but even not orientated right to north first, by triangulation of visible landmarks to the map, including the road I am on.
But for the newbies, if you are facing south, turn the bloody map upside down, and look at it that way, it makes more sense when you look between the real world and the map that way.
Once you know the map symbols, they are supposed to be easily read upside down.
Thats why they use icons.
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Post by OziRiS on Nov 18, 2015 11:39:36 GMT
Standard operating procedure is to point the map north. Yeah, fine, get your north and south sorted out... But then to INSIST the map stays the right way up?... What you going to do now?.. walk round the map?.. and if you are holding it, how you do that then?.. I am advanced on map reading, I know that, I had the skills from being about aged 10 and doing the Mountain Leadership course, and self navigating to D-of-E Gold standard, and then on into the Peak Park Rangers. I can read maps upside down, I can also transfer knowledge of what I see on a map in any orientation to real-world, so can not only read a map upside down but even not orientated right to north first, by triangulation of visible landmarks to the map, including the road I am on. But for the newbies, if you are facing south, turn the bloody map upside down, and look at it that way, it makes more sense when you look between the real world and the map that way. Once you know the map symbols, they are supposed to be easily read upside down. Thats why they use icons. I was going to teach Boy the "turn the map, so you're looking at it in the direction of travel" trick, but I didn't have to. He figured that one out on his own. |
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Post by the light works on Nov 18, 2015 15:39:48 GMT
Standard operating procedure is to point the map north. Yeah, fine, get your north and south sorted out... But then to INSIST the map stays the right way up?... What you going to do now?.. walk round the map?.. and if you are holding it, how you do that then?.. I am advanced on map reading, I know that, I had the skills from being about aged 10 and doing the Mountain Leadership course, and self navigating to D-of-E Gold standard, and then on into the Peak Park Rangers. I can read maps upside down, I can also transfer knowledge of what I see on a map in any orientation to real-world, so can not only read a map upside down but even not orientated right to north first, by triangulation of visible landmarks to the map, including the road I am on. But for the newbies, if you are facing south, turn the bloody map upside down, and look at it that way, it makes more sense when you look between the real world and the map that way. Once you know the map symbols, they are supposed to be easily read upside down. Thats why they use icons. I was going to teach Boy the "turn the map, so you're looking at it in the direction of travel" trick, but I didn't have to. He figured that one out on his own. I am one of those who usually looks at the map with north away from me, and rotates it mentally; but when I am looking at blueprints, I will usually orient it with the house. the applicable school of thought is "if it works, it isn't wrong" the difference for me is that with the map, if I am traveling, I will be spending an inordinate amount of time rotating the map and reorienting on where I am. with the blueprint, I just lay it on something and it can stay there. |
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