This is a small project for a family to do together over two weekends. You make a map of your own neighbourhood, mark the places you could visit, choose a handful to try, and then turn what you find into a shared map that the whole family has helped build. It needs paper, pens and a little patience, and it can be done by one child, several children or the whole household.
Before you start
Decide who the map is for. A big hand-drawn sketch may suit a younger child; a printed street map gives an older child more to work with.
You will need:
- A large sheet of paper, or a printed map of your area (A3 gives you room)
- Pencils, pens and a few coloured highlighters or stickers
- Sticky notes or small cards
- A folder or clipboard for your visit sheets
The method
Weekend one: plan the map
- Get your base map. Print a map of your area from a website you already use, or draw one from memory and correct it as you go. Mark your home, and put a ring around the area you could realistically reach on foot, by bike or by public transport. Choose the size of that ring to suit your own family.
- List the kinds of place. Write down the types of place you think might be free or low-cost to visit. Good starting categories are a library, a park, a museum, a market, a church hall, an allotment, a community garden, a war memorial, a river or canal path, a village green.
- Mark what you already know. Place a sticker or a dot for every place on your list that you can already locate. Use one colour per type of place so the map is easy to read at a glance.
- Find the places you do not know. Ask neighbours, other home educating families, or a librarian. Add each new place to the map in a different colour, so you can see what you have discovered rather than what you already knew. If you want help finding other families, there is more in our guide to building a home education community.
- Check each place before you commit. This step matters. For every place you are considering, find out for yourself whether it is open, whether it is free or has a cost, whether you need to book, and whether it suits the people coming. Do this from the organiser’s own notices or by asking them. Write what you learn on a sticky note and attach it to the dot.
- Choose five. Pick five places to visit. Let each person nominate one, and then agree the remaining places together. Number them one to five on the map.
Weekend two and beyond: visit and record
- Make a simple visit sheet. Use one side of A4 per place. Leave a space for each of these headings: the name of the place; the date; who came; what we noticed; one question we want answered; and one thing to draw or photograph. Print or copy five of them.
- Visit and fill in the sheet. You do not need to do all five in one weekend. Spread them over as many weekends as suits you. At each place, let the children take the lead on what to look at. Fill in the sheet on the spot or soon afterwards, while memories are fresh.
- Turn the sheets into a shared map. When you have visited some or all of your five, take a fresh large sheet. Redraw your area, adding only the places you have been. Beside each one, add a small drawing, a photograph or a few words taken from the visit sheet. Let different people take charge of different places.
- Decide what to do with it. You might pin it on a wall, fold it into a box file, or share a copy with another family. Some families keep adding to it over the years. See our post on documenting learning without tests if you want ideas for keeping the visit sheets as part of your records.
A hypothetical example
This is an invented example to show how the steps might look. It does not describe a real family or a real town.
Imagine a family of four in a small market town. The children are nine and twelve. On the first Saturday they print a street map of the town and mark home with a star. The twelve-year-old draws a ring around everything within a half-hour walk. They list eight kinds of place and mark six they already know: the library, a park, a weekly market, the churchyard, a recreation ground and a stretch of canal path.
A neighbour mentions an allotment site and a hall; both go on the map in a new colour.
On Sunday the parent phones or checks the notices for each place on the shortlist, writing the answers on sticky notes. One place turns out to need booking; another is closed for the season. Those go to the bottom of the list. The family agrees on five and numbers them.
Over the next three weekends they visit four of them, filling in a visit sheet each time. On the final weekend they draw a fresh map together. They leave the fifth place blank, labelled “next time”.
Assumptions
- You live somewhere with at least a few places to visit within reach. In a very rural area your map may be larger and your five places further apart; in a city you may have to narrow the ring.
- You have a reliable way to get there, whether on foot, by bike, by car or by public transport.
- You are able to check each place yourself before you go, rather than relying on this article or on old information.
- If you share the map outside the family, you have decided whether to mark your own address on it.
Limitations
This article cannot tell you what is in your area, when anything is open, whether it costs money, or what any particular place offers. Those details change, and they differ from one place to the next. Always check directly with each place.
It also offers no safety guidance. For anything involving travel with children, water, livestock, tools, or visiting a place run by an organisation with its own rules, look for the guidance given by that place or by the relevant official body, and follow what they say.
The project is a suggestion, not a tested programme, and no outcome is promised. If it is not working, change the number of places, the size of the ring or the format of the sheet.
Next step
Pick a time this week, find a sheet of paper, and spend twenty minutes drawing your home and the streets around it. Do not worry about accuracy. When you have that, you are ready to start listing places.
If your map includes your local library, our library guide may help you plan that visit, and the post on geography through real places has ideas for observing your local area. For trips further afield, see learning through travel.