Home Geography for Primary Grades · Lesson VIII · Unit 2: Distance, pictures and plans
8. Pictures and plans
Goal: Your child knows the difference between a picture and a plan, and draws a plan of a table or room to scale with N, S, E and W marked.
You'll need
- Building blocks, books or small boxes
- A large sheet of paper and pencil
- A tape measure and ruler
- A small table (or the top of a toy box) to make a plan of
What's in the book
A story about a boy who traced around blocks to show his cousin a plan of his house, then a picture of a schoolroom beside a plan of the same room. The lesson explains how to draw the plan using one inch for one foot, how to show doors, windows, desks, a globe and the teacher's table, and how to mark north, south, east and west.
The lesson, step by step
Picture or plan?
Look at the picture of the schoolroom and then at the plan of it in the book.
The picture shows the objects as we see them before us. The plan shows where the objects are, and their direction from one another.
Ask: What can you see in the picture that you cannot see in the plan? (the front of the desks, the clock) What does the plan show better? (where everything is)
Trace a house
Do what the little boy in the book did: lay blocks in the shape of a house on a large sheet of paper, trace around them, then lift them away. There is the plan.
A bird's-eye view
SayA plan is what a bird would see looking straight down.
Hold a cup above the paper and look down: the plan of a cup is a circle. Trace around the bottom of a cup, a book and a box.
Scale
Read how the book makes the plan smaller than the room.
Make one inch in the plan stand for one foot in the room.
Ask: The book's room is 40 feet long. How long is the line in the plan? (40 inches) If the door is 3 feet wide? (3 inches)
Plan of a small table
Measure a small table together. Draw its plan using one inch for every foot (or for every 6 inches if the table is small). Put a few objects on it and draw their plans in the right places: a circle for a cup, an oblong for a book.
Mark the directions
Using your N, S, E, W signs, write N, S, E and W on the four sides of the plan.
SayNow we can tell the direction of one thing from another on the plan.
Ask: Which object is farthest north?
Afterwards
Draw plans of other flat-topped things: a bookshelf top, a dinner table set for supper, a sandbox.
Answers to the book's problems
A picture shows how things look from where we stand; a plan shows where things are and their direction from one another, as if looking straight down. With one inch for one foot, the 40-foot sides of the book's room become 40-inch lines, the 30-foot sides become 30-inch lines, and a 3-foot door becomes 3 inches wide.
Worked out for this site from the scan. If a number in your copy differs, trust the book.