Grid It, Map It
Overview
Once a Box City is built, groups of
children use bodies and string to grid the city, then map sections of the
city. The activity can be used with smaller city layouts as well, or
following Boomtown projects.
This activity invented itself over
the course of several gym-sized Box Cities in New England towns. Whereas
in some areas of the country towns and cities are based on straight lines
and square corners, many New England town layouts are based on the area's
varied topography. Given hills, and a river running next to the base of
the hills, early settlers most often began their towns along the river;
subsequent roads either skirted the edges of the hills or wound their way
up and over those hills. The benefit of overlaying our New England
topography with a regular mapping grid becomes clear in this hands-on
mapping exercise.
