My Little Poppies LLC is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Affiliate links from Amazon or other programs are used on this website. For more information, please refer to our disclosure statement.

For quite some time now, my children have been interested in maps. They love to collect them, create them, go on treasure hunts using them, and read about them. I saw this map-obsession as a perfect learning opportunity.

As I sat down to think about how I could expand upon my kids’ interest in maps, I realized that there is an awful lot of map vocabulary. From directionality to legends to landforms– there are oodles of new geography-related words to learn.

Generally speaking, we aren’t a huge flashcard family, but what better way to cover all these vocab words than a stack of flashcards? Plus, I would get to use my beloved laminator. Win- win!

Table of Contents

Map Vocabulary Flash Cards

How to make your own map vocabulary flash cards

Leo and I had a brainstorming session in order to come up with all of the vocabulary words and definitions that you’ll see here. It was tough to choose, and we could have gone on and on and on forever, but we think we made a pretty decent dent in the must-know map lingo. Among other resources, we relied heavily on our game collection, encyclopedias, and Mapping the World by Heart, a new curriculum we are trying out this year.

1. Brainstorm map vocabulary and definitions. Create a two column table and type the vocabulary words in the left column and the appropriate definitions in the right, and then print. If you want to save time, you can skip the brainstorming and typing and print the vocabulary words and definitions that we came up with by clicking here.

2. Cut out the table.

3. Then, cut out the vocabulary and definition pairs.

4. Fold in half, so that the vocabulary word is on one side and the definition is on the reverse side.

5. Laminate!

6. Cut out the individual flash cards. This is a perfect fine motor activity for littles, by the way!

7. Enjoy! We have been using our flash cards at dinner. They don’t take up much space and because they are laminated they can be wiped clean after contact with sticky fingers!