Celebrate Leif Eriksson Day with a Discovery Craft
October 9th is Leif Eriksson Day. If you’re not sure exactly what this means or why we celebrate it – Eriksson was the first traveler to land on North America (roughly 500 years before Christopher Columbus even set sail). That said, it wasn’t for centuries after Columbus’s journey that the history books picked-up on Eriksson’s story. Why? Unlike other discoverers, he didn’t leave behind a map. In celebration of Eriksson’s unrecorded journey, invite your child to do what the discoverer didn’t – make a map. Take a look at the globe and chart out trip from Greenland to North America. Next, have your little traveler craft her own map of the trip!
Materials:
- Card stock paper in white or another light color
- Markers, colored pencils or crayons
- A globe
Instructions:
- Plot the trip out on the globe, discussing how Eriksson got to North America (i.e., by boat over the water).
- Begin at the starting point – Greenland. Have your child draw a land mass for Greenland on the right side of the paper.
- On the other side of the paper draw another land mass for North America.
- Color in the ocean in betweem the two.
- Draw arrows to create the trip’s path. Even though your child may not know the exact route, she can imagine what it would have looked like.
