Back during summer school, my students got started drawing a giant map of the world on our classroom wall. This is a project that a Peace Corps volunteer first developed in the 80s or something, and Peace Corps liked it so much that they made a “how-to” manual for volunteers worldwide.

It was a massive undertaking – I don’t think I fully understood what we were getting into at the beginning. Before summer school started up, I had to draw a meticulous grid – you can see it in the pictures below. Then the students learned about enlarging images according to the grid lines and started drawing all the countries – the result is actually pretty accurate, considering this is basically just one step up from freehand.

The original plan was to finish the map during summer school, but that goal soon proved entirely unrealistic. With the sketched outline done, we left the painting and labeling for September. We worked on the painting most days after school for about two weeks. Basically, we made a huge mess, made lots of mistakes (“oh no! We forgot Rwanda!”), and somehow managed to create something that actually resembles the world. That being said, we do have lots of unintentional “peninsulas” as a result of dripping paint, he he. Also a massive “tsunami” when students accidentally painted ocean over most of Central America (that one we fixed, though).

This week, Robert Reid (our new country director) came to our school to see the map. The kids sang a song about the world “We’ve got the whole world in our hands!” with verses about the different continents. About ten of them also talked about their favorite Magic Tree House books and pointed out on the map where the books took place. I was very proud :)

Also, here’s your reminder to SMILE!