Map Symbols Worksheet

Every map tells its story with pictures. Map symbols are the small pictures a mapmaker uses to stand for real things — a tent for a campground, a plane for an airport, a patch of blue for a lake. Learning to read those pictures is the first real map skill a young student needs, because a symbol is what turns a flat drawing into useful information about a place. This Map Symbols Worksheet gives 2nd grade students focused practice matching common map symbols to the words that name them, so they can look at a map key and know exactly what they are seeing.

This 2nd grade map skills worksheet keeps the task clear and uncluttered. Six large picture cards each show one map symbol, and a word box at the top holds eight choices. Students study each symbol, decide which place it stands for, and write the word on the solid line inside the card. Two of the eight words — Bridge and Hospital — belong to no picture at all, so students have to read every choice instead of crossing words off in order. Use it as a warm-up before a mapping unit, as independent practice at a social studies center, or as a quick check before students build a map key of their own.

What’s Included

• 1 print-ready PDF worksheet
• Answer key
• 6 map symbol identification activities with an eight-word word box

This Map Symbols Worksheet helps students in three ways. First, it builds vocabulary: forest, airport, school, lake, food and camping are the exact words that appear on real map keys, so students meet them in the setting where they matter. Second, it trains careful looking, because two extra choices mean a student cannot guess by position and has to compare each picture with each word. Third, the writing line under every picture turns recognition into recall, since writing a word is harder and stickier than circling one. Together those three moves take students from noticing a symbol to naming it with confidence.

Teachers and parents can stretch this lesson well past the page. Walk around the school or the neighborhood and ask children which symbol they would draw for the playground, the library or the crossing guard, then sketch a class map key on chart paper. Hand out a road map or a zoo map and play a quick scavenger hunt to see who can find the picnic symbol first. Let children invent their own symbols for the rooms of their home and trade maps with a partner to find out whether the pictures can be read without any words at all. Each of these games practices the same thinking this worksheet starts.

Related Resources

• Find the Parts of a Map Worksheet
• Neighborhood Map Worksheet
• Make a Map Worksheet
• Community Song (Have Fun Teaching on YouTube)