DIY Land, Water & Air Mat, Montessori Early Geography At Home

This is our version of a Land, Water & Air Mat. This lesson is highly recognized, and has many versions and DIY options for presentation. We started as most do with a set of jars containing soil, water, and the third empty to represent air.


This is how we created our mat...

I used knobbed puzzle pieces from a wooden farm puzzle that we already owned. This provided a little extra fine motor pincer grasp practice element. You can use whatever you like to accompany your mat. Small figures are wonderful if you have a selection of them, or you can also simply use images.

To Make This  I used drop sheet (painters) canvas that I painted with acrylic to create the blue back ground.  You could simply paint the canvas, but I thought it would be fun to use felt.
My felt is all from the dollar store. The second mat you see was for our Continents Mat here.

I started cutting out the shapes to create the background. I laid out the pieces to get a general idea of composition, and played around with it to built the picture from the back ground forward.
When I was satisfied with the layout, I glued everything down with a hot glue gun.

This mat has gotten lots of use and not only with this lesson, but mainly now for lots of storytelling and imaginative play!

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