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Resources / Ideas for child obsessed with roads / roadmaps


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My child is obsessed with roads and road maps.  He spends hours drawing roads and maps. We bought him a large Rand McNally road atlas and he studies it closely.  He has a huge wall sized map of the world in his room.  

 

We thought this would be a passing fad but it's been about 2 years with no signs of letting up.

 

Would appreciate suggestions for resources he might enjoy or other ideas for helping him pursue this interest. He is 6.

 

Thank you!

 
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Hi!

Your post made me smile with warm, nostalgic feelings. My older son has always been obsessed with maps, and now he is a freshman in college majoring in geography. So no, the obsession might not let up. 

 

We always gave him a new Rand McNally at the start of every school year. It was a tradition. We also purchased him multiple "street finder" map books of our own county plus those of places we visited (such as http://store.randmcnally.com/thomas-guide-san-diego-county-street-guide.html). For Christmas we purchased detailed wall maps from the USGS...they have some really neat ones. My aunt, who is in the process of visiting all the national parks, sends him park maps in the mail. And of course, Google Earth is an endless supply of fascination. Even though my son is in college now, he still has daily "down time" when he sits with his Rand McNally on the left of his desk and his Google Earth open on his laptop on the right of his desk and studies the actual topography/road systems in 2D and 3D. 

 

We also provided ds with nice art materials (loose art paper, sketchbooks, Prismacolor colored pencils, quality fine tipped markers, etc.) to draw his own. He has art-quality notebooks filled with his own hand-drawn maps, and his home and dorm rooms display large maps that he has drawn over the years. 

 

Enjoy!

Jetta

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That was me growing up. Geography is the obvious connection here, but it would be a mistake to assume that it's his calling.

 

It actually may be a tell-tale of a strategic bent - a desire to understand how things fit together, and how to navigate the possibilities. If you see his interests move into alternative state lines, etc, then you will know for sure.

 

My suggestion, in that case, would be to look into social sciences and mathematics - particularly probability and statistics. Psychology, anthropology, and economics are likely strengths.

 

In hindsight, I would have liked strategic management to have been an option, but we were a stem-only household. Data science is an exploding field right now, and someone who understands strategy, psychology, economics, and statistics would own the field.

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When my map-obsessed one was that age, one thing we liked was this: https://books.google.ca/books/about/Basic_Mapwork_Skills.html?id=cDZUDN6fAfEC&redir_esc=y

 

Also this was a particular favourite (still is, actually) : https://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/classics/all/00306/facts.atlas_maior.htm

 

It doesn't go away! We now have bookshelves groaning under the weight of various specialised atlases.

 

Would he be interested in playing with a GIS program at all? I think Esri has some good educational things on their website: http://edcommunity.esri.com/resources/collections

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One of my children was map-obsesed - years later, they're still a map-studier. We recently bought pin-it maps http://www.pinitmaps.com and they were a big hit. One thing that this map habit has done is thaqt it's helped us all to see how much history is influenced by location, so maybe your son would like learning about history (ancient, military, etc) with a lot of map use. My map-lover was also thrilled with a world history timeline (we have the one by schofield and sims on amaazon) because it made it easy to see history and geography at the same time.

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Mine was map obsessed starting at age 3 - we had him memorize the daily routes that we took (e.g. head straight, take the 2nd left on Elm street, take a U turn etc) and helped him scrawl out daily commute maps to Daycare, TaeKwonDo class etc. We also allowed him to use Google maps and Google earth to study city maps. We had a bunch of maps from AAA that we used before GPS times and he uses those as well. When he was school age, we incorporated geography studies with maps of states, coloring in important landmarks for each state etc. I also used the Evan Moore Map Skills books in pre-K and K.

Edited by mathnerd
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My map lovers like the book Where On Earth by DK.

 

I also requested an aeronautical chart from our state's department of transportation website. It was free in our state, at least.

 

Has he discovered topographical maps?

 

This map has been going around Facebook recently: River Basin Map of the US.

 

Activities like letter boxing and/or geocaching can be fun.

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What type of features does he draw on the map?

Is he using NASA's resources?

So far, it's mostly roads, road signage (lots of road signage), stores, buildings, local landmarks. He doesn't draw a lot of geographical features.  He seems to be particularly interested in roads merging and dividing.

 

NASA's resources? I didn't know NASA had resources. Would love your suggestions!

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That was me growing up. Geography is the obvious connection here, but it would be a mistake to assume that it's his calling.

 

It actually may be a tell-tale of a strategic bent - a desire to understand how things fit together, and how to navigate the possibilities. If you see his interests move into alternative state lines, etc, then you will know for sure.

 

My suggestion, in that case, would be to look into social sciences and mathematics - particularly probability and statistics. Psychology, anthropology, and economics are likely strengths.

 

In hindsight, I would have liked strategic management to have been an option, but we were a stem-only household. Data science is an exploding field right now, and someone who understands strategy, psychology, economics, and statistics would own the field.

 

Agreed! He is the limit-pusher and out-of-box thinker in the family. 

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 He seems to be particularly interested in roads merging and dividing.

 

He might be interested in graph theory and traffic optimization in the future.  See if he likes problems like the Konigsberg Bridge Problem.

 

http://www.mathsisfun.com/activity/seven-bridges-konigsberg.html

http://www.maa.org/press/periodicals/convergence/leonard-eulers-solution-to-the-konigsberg-bridge-problem

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