Learn fifteen landforms with these landforms flash cards for kindergarten to 4th grade: painted picture fronts, words and meanings inside, a practice page and an answer key included.
Mountains, valleys and sandbox science
Kindergartners learn that the land on Earth comes in different shapes. They name the big ones: mountains are tall and pointy, hills are small and round, valleys are low between hills, and islands have water all around. They also meet lakes, rivers and oceans. Kids describe each one with simple words like tall, flat and low. The click moment comes when a child builds an island in the sandbox and says, "Water all around!"
Little geographers learn by looking, building and moving. These moves work every time.
Show one landform card at a time and ask, "Is it tall or flat? Is there water?" Kids name it and describe it. Do a few cards a day so the words stick.
Why it works: children learn more from words and pictures together than from words alone (Mayer, 2009).
Try it withLandforms Flash CardsFlash CardsOpen it →Use a sand table or a tray of play dough to build a mountain, a valley and an island. Pour a little water to make a lake. Building the shape makes the word make sense.
Why it works: the U.S. Department of Education's guide for teaching elementary math recommends moving from hands-on objects to drawings to numbers.
Call out a landform and kids show it with their bodies: stand tall for a mountain, curl up small for a hill, lie flat for a plain. Quick and wiggly!
Why it works: in a well-known study, a few short sessions of a simple number board game measurably boosted young children's number skills (Ramani and Siegler, 2008).
Usually mountains, hills, valleys, plains and islands, plus water like lakes, rivers and oceans. The goal is naming them and describing their shape.
A landform is a natural shape of the land, like a mountain, hill or valley. Kids can think of it as the shape of the ground.
Build them in a sandbox or with play dough, then name each one together. Point them out on walks or in picture books too.
An island is land with water all around it. Building one in a tub of water is the easiest way to show it.
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