So Where Is Green County?

1. Invite students to use a variety of resources to find place names that include a color name, such as Green County, Cap-Rouge, Blue Mountains. Some may be colors in other languages. Share your list with classmates. Choose one color, and search for places across your home country with names containing that color. Record findings with Crayola® Erasable Colored Pencils on a copy of a map.
2. Ask students to design a large map of their country with Crayola Erasable Colored Pencils or Color Sticks on poster board. Add three-dimensional, pop-out, color-coded labels for the colorful place names found. To make labels, cut small strips of paper with Crayola Scissors. Students write the place name in the appropriate color. Accordion fold the strip and attach to the map with Crayola School Glue.
3. Invite students to imagine a journey between their color place names. Glue yarn to the map to show travel path. Find out how many miles traveled from place to place and add the information to the maps. Determine how long it will take to drive from one place to the next.
4. Students use Crayola Fine Tip Markers to create a colorful, imaginary travel log detailing your journey. Include information about each region, such as geographic characteristics, landmarks, historical background, and cultural identities.
5. Provide an opportunity for students to share their travel logs and maps with small groups of classmates.

LA: Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.

LA: Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade level topics and texts, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly.

LA: Paraphrase portions of a text read aloud or information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally.

MATH: Solve problems involving measurement and estimation of intervals of time, liquid volumes, and masses of objects.

SCI: Obtain information about the locations of a variety of Earth’s features and map the geographic patterns that emerge.

SS: Explore and describe similarities and differences in the ways groups, societies, and cultures address similar human needs and concerns.

SS: Describe ways in which language, stories, folktales, music, and artistic creations serve as expressions of culture and influence behavior of people living in a particular culture.

SS: Use appropriate resources, data sources, and geographic tools to generate, manipulate, and interpret information.

SS: Demonstrate an ability to use correctly vocabulary associated with time such as past, present, future, and long ago; read and construct simple timelines; identify examples of change; and recognize examples of cause and effect relationships.

VA: Use visual structures of art to communicate ideas.

VA: Select and use subject matter, symbols, and ideas to communicate meaning.

VA: Identify specific works of art as belonging to particular cultures, times, and places.

In the classroom, have a wide range of electronic and library resources available to research colorful place names in students' home country, state or province, or elsewhere in the world.

Students work in small groups to investigate the similarities and differences between selected color locations, such as Greenville, North Carolina and Greenville, South Carolina. How far away are they from each other? What bodies of water are located near each? What landforms? Size and population of each? Etc. Students prepare a presentation for classmates.

Students that are learning a second language may wish to focus on places where that language is spoken. Find local maps in the language so children can identify color words. Label maps with authentic place names. Students further identify the country or continent their selection is located in, population, major landforms, etc.

Students plan a trip between locations. Measure the distance between locations and mark these on maps using string or yarn. How would you travel from one location to another? What would it cost to travel from one location to another? Upon arriving, where would you stay and how much would it cost you for lodging? Food? Etc.