Creative Geography

In education, we deal with a lot of what is sometimes called "creative spelling," where a child who has no idea how to spell a word will pretty much make up a spelling. Take, for example, the word "aghsome."

But I think we need a new term in education, so I'm introducing, "Creative Geography," where a child who has no idea where countries or major landforms are located makes it up.

My partner teacher's kids have social studies with me every other week, and they are enormous creative geographers. For example, if you didn't already know, my partner teacher's students tell me that Canada comes in two parts, one part north of the U.S., and one part south. They also think Chicago is a country and Mackinac Island is it's own state. Truly.

Today, as I was grading their final projects for our Colonial Times unit, I came across quite the interesting picture. One student chose to make a poster for his project. He drew a picture of a cabin with some farm fields and a garden patch with a slave working, and in the background, a volcano, spewing lava over the entire scene. You didn't know that there were active volcanoes in the thirteen original colonies, did you?

Neither did I.