Engage your students in a fun playground-mapping geography activity where they design and map their school playground! This hands-on map-making activity helps Kindergarten, First Grade and Second Grade students develop essential geography and spatial awareness skills while exploring real features of their school environment.

Perfect for Geography or HASS lessons, students will create their own playground map, identify natural and built geographic features, and practise using compass directions and positional language. This engaging activity also introduces the difference between side view and bird’s-eye view, helping students understand how maps represent real places.

Students love drawing and designing their own playground while building important mapping skills, geographic vocabulary, and early geography understanding in a creative and meaningful way.

Why teachers love this resource

• Builds early geography and mapping skills through a meaningful real-world activity

• Strengthens spatial awareness and positional language while students design their own playground maps

• Introduces key geography concepts such as natural vs built environments and a bird’s-eye view

• Develops compass direction knowledge with engaging practice activities

• Supports writing and observation skills as students describe features in their playground

• Easy to implement with clear teacher modelling examples

• Saves teachers planning time with ready-to-use printables and structured activities

• Works well for whole class lessons, small groups, centres or homework

This easy-to-use, best-selling resource includes

• Teacher instructions for easy lesson preparation

• Geographic features cards (natural and built environments)

• “Geographic Features in My Playground” recording sheet

• Side View vs Bird’s-Eye View information sheet

• Compass directions worksheets for map skills practice

• Modelled example: writing about the playground (side view and bird’s-eye view)

• Student playground writing and map-making recording sheet

• Visual checklist of playground geographic features

• Cut-and-paste activity option for younger learners

• Large teacher modelling examples for whole-class whiteboard instruction

What teachers are saying about this resource

⭐ “My students loved using this resource. I used it in a Prep class for HASS during small group rotations. The assessment task was very similar to this activity so it provided great scaffolding and was very engaging and real-world for the children.”

⭐ “This resource assisted with planning and teaching students from home. Both students and parents found it very easy to use.”

⭐ “Great resource! I highly recommend using this when teaching map making in your class. It will save you so much time.”

⭐ “Students created wonderful playground maps and then designed playground structures afterwards!”