Fun Map Games for Kids That Teach Geography
These map games for kids are the perfect way to get your middle schooler excited about learning more about the world around them. Don’t skip the middle school geography lessons, instead make them engaging!
Exploring and learning about nations, countries, and cities is often a daunting task for students, but geography map games make the process easier and far more enjoyable.
Whether they’re learning about continent and country outlines, important bodies of water, or metropolitan areas that define various countries, middle schoolers can strengthen their knowledge through the use of map-based games in geography class.
When you add them to your lesson plans, students get a fun and interactive way to engage their minds, challenge themselves, and learn more about the world.
Not sure how to get started? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.
We’ll show you why it’s important to use hands-on tools like board games and computer games with kids and introduce you to some of the best map games for middle school.
Why should we study geography?
As your children’s geography teacher, it’s important to include the subject in your homeschool lesson plans because it helps kids of all ages better understand the world around them.
It’s important not only for the knowledge it provides, but also for the skills that are developed.
Geography involves learning about cultures from all around the world, figuring out how to use a map, exploring landforms, researching environmental and climate issues, and developing an appreciation for natural resources.
By studying geography, kids can gain a better understanding of the diversity of our world and become more thoughtful global citizens.
Luckily, teaching geography to middle school students can be quite fun.
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Should geography lessons include maps?
Yes! Learning geography is so much more engaging when there are maps involved.
Maps offer a highly detailed and visual way for students to learn about the world’s locations, politics, cultures, and more. They also help students develop a deeper understanding of the globalised world and how different countries connect.
The best thing is that you don’t have to stick to paper maps. One of the best ways to use maps in your homeschool is by adding fun and educational map games into your lesson plans.
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How to Use Map Games to Teach Geography
Games work so well in school settings because it’s easier for tweens to understand and retain information when you make lessons interesting and interactive.
I used world geography games for years in our homeschool.
Geography map games are a fun way to bring some excitement into the school day and teach at the same time!
You can use games to show all kinds of concepts like countries and their flags, landforms, and bodies of water. Or the capital cities of various countries or important map skills like longitude and latitude. Some can even teach about different landforms like deserts, mountains, and rainforests.
And nothing beats learning and knowing how to use a map, whether it’s physical or digital.
Whether they use maps to teach a topic or to pinpoint a specific location, it’s definitely a unique way to look at the subject of geography.
Here are a few ways you can use these games with your kids:
- Use them as a review tool for lessons, allowing kids to practice the concepts they’ve learned.
- If your tweens are struggling to stay focused, pull out a game for a quick break.
- Make map games a regular part of your curriculum to help teach various concepts. Sometimes a different perspective is all it takes for a lightbulb to go off.
- Add a map board game to your game closet and use it to build your geography skills as a family.
Making geography fun for tweens is important if you want them to be excited about the material.
Luckily, it’s actually quite easy to incorporate interactive tools like these into your geography lessons. Trust me, your older kids will love using them to learn geography.
More Geography Ideas
Want to build your tween’s geographical knowledge? Here are some hands-on ideas.
- Geography Board Games
- Educational Geography Games and Activities
- Online Geography Games
- Map Activities for Kids
- Geography Terms BINGO
Map Games for Kids
Looking for fun and interactive games to build your tween's geography knowledge? Look no further than these - the most popular map games for kids!
They focus primarily on maps, highlighting things like continents, countries, capitals, and more.
Online Geography Map Games
Online geography games for kids.
This game has one mission in mind – to help students have fun while learning about the world around them. They have created different options for your students and they're all conveniently played online.
While playing the games on this site, kids get asked questions and they'll need to click the outline of the country that's the right answer.
Kids can choose to focus on specific continents and world countries or just play with random countries of the world. No matter what they choose, they'll need to identify a location on a map correctly.
There's also a bunch of flag games where players see a flag and need to click on the outline of the country or state it belongs to.
This quiz game is an incredible map of the world that allows students to explore physical features with activities like interactive continents, famous landmarks, and world landforms.
They can also play games to test their knowledge of the world's nations or waterways.
The best part is it works on all devices.
The games in this program are all related to United States geography. They're designed to help students learn about the 50 states, capitals, landscapes, rivers, and more.
They also have different levels included, so as your kids progress, the games get more difficult. They can keep playing to beat their high score.
This is considered one of the best map quiz sites. Tweens can use it to not only work on identifying countries, capitals and cities, but also bodies of water.
Map Board Games
Map-related board games for geography.
This is a fun geography card game that's all about world flags. It includes cards representing 194 different countries, containing over 1,500 facts.
Each one has a country's flag and interesting facts about each location.
You can easily use the cards separate from the game as part of your lesson when you want to review facts or play a round of trivia.
It’s considered one of the best board games for older kids.
Kids will move their tokens across the US states on the map, answering questions about United States geography, all while trying to be the first person to collect their specific state cards.
With this fun geography activity kit, kids can learn facts about the world while building their general knowledge at the same time. It includes a world map activity, reusable stickers, pretend passports, and more.
t's perfect for ages 5 to 12, so your kids can all play together.
Use this to work on US geography with your kids. Players each have two game sheets, each with 5 states, that they have to collect to win.
They get their state card by identifying locations on the map and correctly answering questions and challenges along the way.
Printable Geography Games
Downloadable games that all use maps.
Tweens will use the 13 different coordinates on this printable and a map with latitude and longitude lines to find the correct country in each clue.
It's an easy way for tweens and teens to practice finding locations using directional coordinates.
This printable game includes 26 clues about world geography. The correct answer to each one starts with a different letter, ranging from A to Z.
Kids will need to use an atlas that's filled with world maps to solve these map quizzes.
Using an atlas and USA map, kids will search for the answer to the 26 clues found on this U.S. printable version.
All the A to Z clues relate to United States geography.
What are some of your favorite map games for kids?
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I can’t believe you didn’t mention Seterra or Geoguessr. Those have been some of our most favorite geography-based online games.
You are exactly right Amy! I have them listed in my post “11 Must Try Online Geography Games” and didn’t want to duplicate. But they should be here too. I agree – they’re awesome!