Ideas on How to Introduce Land and Water Forms to Kids

We have worked on a few activities on land and water forms over the years and so I came up with a roundup post for reference.

Learning Land and Water Forms Using Plasticine

This is the first land and water form activity that Mavi and I did when he was about 3 years old, Lakes and Islands.


In this representation, the child will be able to understand that in an island, boats can freely roam around the island while they will be contained within a lake similar to the water.

Learning Land and Water Forms Using Maps and Playdough

The second time Mavi and I worked on land and water forms, we used a real map of the Philippines and from here we identified the peninsula, the group of islands, etc.  Then we made our map using playdough with several land and water forms in it.

Learning Land and Water Forms Using Land and Water Transportation

I finally got our land and water form material from a Montessori shop and here’s how we worked on it.   This time, we used our Safari Toob on the Road and Safari Toob In the Water to identify the water and land forms in our cards.

Learning Land and Water Forms of the Polar Regions

We integrate land and water forms in our geography learning activities.  In this lesson, we were talking about the Arctic regions and Antarctica.  I used the concept of “group of islands” and “island” to differentiate Antarctica from the Arctic lands.  You can read more on this learning activity here, Landforms of the Arctic and Antarctic Regions.


Of course, you can do this lesson to any country of your choice as well!

Recreating Land and Water Forms with Playdough

Because the kids are so obsessed with playdough, Mavi made land and water form miniatures using our homemade playdough.  He had so much fun recreating these!  Materials he used as guides are from our shop, you can learn about it here (Land and Water Forms Learning Pack) and here (Montessori Land and Water Features with Real Images).

Recreating Lakes and Islands

The latest in our list is the new version of lakes and islands using kinetic sand and glass nuggets.  I didn’t really want to get messy around this time so I prepared something simple for Vito.  He had fun playing with these containers!  The set of cards we used here are from my shop (Montessori Land and Water Features with Real Images).