You can teach your kids about geography, topography, and landscaping through making topography scenes. You can choose a real location and re-create it in LEGOs, or you can create your own scene. This is a great activity for learning about geographic terms such as waterfall, fjord, peninsula, cave, volcano, archipelago, delta, glacier, island, mesa, etc.
A topographic map uses contour lines to represent three-dimensional features such as mountains. You can teach kids how to read contour maps and have them build the topographic map with LEGOs. You want to start with a green LEGO base representing the lowest area of the map. Build up from there, adding hills, valleys, mountains, volcanoes, etc.
Younger kids can create simpler topographic maps with LEGOs. A river with trees and hills is a perfect starting place. Blue represents water on maps, and green usually represents land that gets plenty of rainfall. Yellow could represent deserts.
We created a scene with a mountain and a waterfall. On the back of the mountain my son created a cave. Trees were added to embellish the lushness of the scene.
If you enjoyed this hands-on geography activity, you will love the Geography section of the Unit Study Treasure Vault!
