Introduction to land, air, and water {preschool geography}

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In Montessori education, there is usually an introductory geography lesson focused on land, air, and water. In this post I’m sharing how I introduced the concepts of land, air, and water to my kids as part of our preschool geography lessons.

Note: You can find more kid-friendly geography activities on my geography unit study page.

Filling containers with land, air, and water

To introduce this lesson, I put together a tray with the following materials:

A small globe
3 empty glass containers labeled “land,””air,” and “water”

I explained to my children that the earth is made up of land, air, and water. I showed them the labels on the glass containers, and asked them if they would help me fill each container with the item listed on the label.

We went outside to collect dirt for the container labeled “land.”

Air was easy to gather, since it is all around us. 🙂

And we used water from the sink to fill the container labeled “water.”

Then we brought our filled containers together to look at them.

Land, air, and water 3-part cards

My kids also worked to sort a collection of land, air, and water 3-part cards. (I downloaded these free land, air, and water 3-part cards from The Helpful Garden.)

The set of cards include one header card plus an additional six cards for each category. My kids sorted the cards under each of our three glass containers.