Dollar Store Map

We went up to my parents over the long weekend, and of course my mom had tons of fun activities for my boys to do.  One of them was a HUGE map of the United States from Dollar Tree.  I still can't believe this came from the dollar store!  What an amazing piece of art and learning tool for just a dollar.  Not to mention the we're-going-to-finish-this-if-it-kills-us stamina my boys developed while doing it.

The map comes in twelve individual pieces of paper measuring 10"x 10" (the competed map is 40" wide and 30" tall).  The individual pieces made the map easy to color.  My twins divided the pages up and went to town.  I can easily tell who colored what.  One of my twins colors hard and dark- he gets it from me (and apparently it carries over to my toothbrushes- they look a year old after a week) and my other twin colors soft and light.  Can you see the difference?

               

My boys did run into a bit of a problem on a few of the individual pieces as they were coloring them.  After a couple of pages they realized some of the states that were split between two pages weren't being colored the same colors.  It didn't take them long to realize they needed to converse together before coloring certain states, so they would match when they were put together.

Here's a picture overload of the map, but I had to show as many sections as I could.  It turned out so cute!  My boys are so proud of it, and I can't say I blame them. 

We simply taped the back of the map together with Scotch tape one piece at a time when they were finished.  It went together really easily.  My mom was so in love with the map that she took it to be laminated, but it was too big to fit through the laminating machine.  She did find a roll of lamination that she bought at her local office supply store, and we used that to cover the map.  That was a bit trickier than the taping part, but the map will last a lot longer now.  

We have family in five different states, so my boys love looking at the map to see where all their cousins are.  It's already proving to be a favorite part of their room.  

So, hurry out to Dollar Tree and find yourself a map.  They also had a cute alphabet and counting one as well.

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