Map Making

I have recently taken a big leap into making materials after too much thinking about making materials and coming up with wishlists that never materialise. Imagine that? Come October it'd be two years since we started formally homeschooling. I've made materials here and there but the past year have been more serious. I made the geometric cabinet, the metal insets and finally the maps are materialising. 

I tried to make it as simple as possible; or I'll never make anything. So, I went to Daiso $2 shop where I found white cardboards about the size of a drawing block. My one-tracked mind started with Asia because that is the continent we are supposed to study first. HAHA! have I learnt my lesson. 

After being carried away with the carving of the countries' outlines, I realised that I had cut off even countries that were teeny  tiny bits. Uzbekistan and Tajikistan for example, are just slightly bigger than the fingernail on my thumb. 

I'm planning to re-draw these tiny pieces in groups from the same region.The map is backed by another cardboard with the outlines traced onto it. 

For the knobs, I used craft blocks of about 1 cm cube blocks from Daiso and hot-glued them to the pieces; the capitals where possible. 

Now, I'm moving on to continents that are simpler; namely Australia, North America, Africa, South America and Europe. For Australia, I've hot glued the map onto an mdf board instead, hopefully it'll be sturdier. 

The kids of course will have to be reminded more than ever to be gentle with the materials. If any if the countries do get 'terminated', it won't be that much of a hassle anyway. I'll just make another one with the cardboard.