Since I was in elementary school I have enjoyed looking at maps and day dreaming about the places those maps depict. I like maps so much I have a couple of USGS topographical maps on the wall in my office. So whenever the USGS emails me with something new, I immediately investigate it. The latest email that I got from the USGS featured collections of “learning from home” resources.

Learning From Home With USGS offers eight weeks of lesson ideas and activities that students can complete online and or offline in their homes. For example, this week’s resources include step-by-step directions and templates for building six different sand dune models. This week’s resources also include dozens of links to resources for learning about national parks that contain sand dunes.

You can use the Learning From Home With USGS units in any order that you like. All of the resources from prior weeks are still available on the Learning From Home pages. Last week’s unit was all about fossils. The fossils unit includes templates and step-by-step directions for making paper dinosaurs.

Applications for Education
If you’re looking for some science or geography activities that your students can complete at home without an Internet connection, the USGS Learning From Home activities are worth your time to explore. All of the templates and step-by-step directions are available in PDFs that you can download and print to mail home to students.

Related Resources
The USGS offers thousands of historical maps that you can download for free through the topoView site.

Google Earth has historical and time-lapse imagery that can be useful in showing students the effects of erosion on coastal areas. Here’s a video on how to find that imagery.