Social studies is such a fun subject area to teach to first graders. It's an important study that allows students to see who they are in this big world and how we all relate together. Common first-grade social studies themes include family and community, and how we can live and work together. Through this content area, students will develop basic skills in economics, civics, history, and geography. You can really have fun with this subject area because the content is so relatable to the kids! I want to share with you some of my favorite first-grade social studies activities I've used in my classroom throughout the years.
1. Engaging Map Skills Activities
Just like learning basic math facts, map skills are a foundational skill that students learn in the primary grades. It also helps build their spatial reasoning skills which will be helpful for years to come. Even though we may have grown up using paper maps on road trips, this generation of kids is much more likely to pull out their phones to open a map for directions. And on top of that, the GPS will likely tell them exactly where to go. But even with this technology available, students still benefit from learning map skills. You can find out more about how I teach maps in my classroom in this post.
My Beginning Map Skills unit is designed to be an informative and exciting introduction to map skills. Your students will be exposed to items on a map, compass rose, cardinal directions, map keys, map scale, and differentiating between a map and a globe. In addition, they will work on reading maps and creating their own maps. They will create their own map lapbook or interactive notebook as a way to collect all of their learning.
Bring Map Skills to Life
One of my favorite social studies activities year after year is the building of the 3D town from this map unit. My students get so excited about building their own community and watching it come to life! There are many different ways you can use this interactive activity.
Create one 3D town as a class. Let each student be part of creating homes and buildings. You can make a fictional town or recreate your own town! Once done, move the finished city to your center rotation, add some small people and cars, and let students use the class creation to reinforce what they learned.
You can also let students create their own 3D town that highlights their home, the school, and a few other important places in your community. Let students use their 3D city as a tool to help explain directions, practice position words, or as the start of a writing activity.
You can find all of these map activities in one resource. The unit includes a mini book, printable activities, 3D town activity, map skills lap book, a writing activity, and digital map skills activities.
2. Learning About Continents and Oceans
Our students need to have an understanding of the world around them. While we start with the local community and family unit, it's not long before we begin working our way out to our city, state, nation, continent, and planet. Teaching continents and oceans is an important part of understanding this amazing planet we live on. It connects science and social studies as students begin to understand the place in space our earth holds.
Understanding that there are different continents is also the foundation for learning about different cultures. And by teaching our students about different cultures, we can build the foundation for an accepting and open frame of mind as we expose our students to people groups, activities, holidays, foods, and other things that aren't part of their daily lives.
While it may not seem like we can accomplish all that with continents and oceans, it's always a good idea to keep the scope and sequence in mind. This includes how grade levels build on one another too!
Yep - our study of oceans and continents might be foundational, but we want to build a solid foundation that our global citizens can stand firmly on. I have pulled all of my favorite resources for teaching oceans and continents into one hands-on and engaging unit. It has everything you need to lay a strong foundation in these topics.
The unit includes everything you need to teach about continents and oceans. All you have to do is print and teach! You will have access to vocabulary cards, mini books, printable practice activities, answer keys, 3D Continent and Oceans Map activity, Map Lap Book, and writing extension activities.
In addition to the lessons in the unit, I love connecting our class lessons with engaging videos and books. This is a great video for teaching the seven continents to add to your social studies activities.
And there's no better way to help students learn and remember facts than through song. Check out these amazing songs for the oceans and continents that will have your students singing along in no time.
3. Teaching About Citizenship
I could spend all day talking about this one. This is one of those important life skills that starts at a young age. How awesome that we get to teach it as a first-grade social studies activity! It is never too early to start teaching kids the important values of citizenship such as honesty, compassion, integrity, respect, and responsibility.
Honestly, this theme is always alive and well in my classroom. We are constantly talking about what it means to be a good citizen within our classroom community, and how we can be better for each other. It is easy to teach this unit in social studies because the themes are built into our everyday classroom life.
I change the unit slightly each year by incorporating different books for read-aloud, but the foundation for our Good Citizenship Unit stays the same. We cover so many topics as part of our citizenship unit. Some of the main topics include: What is a citizen?; Rules and Laws; and Leaders. You can find all of the activities I use in this comprehensive unit.
The unit includes a variety of fun and engaging activities including mini books, sorting activities, printables, Good Citizen record books, headbands, brag tags, and a unit review craft activity!
This unit is great for building the students' confidence and self-esteem along with building your classroom rapport. You can see just how quickly the kids "get it" as they go out of their way to be good citizens at school.
None of these social studies has more day-to-day life connections than economics and financial literacy. First grade is a great time to introduce these important topics. Some of your students may have already started to do a few chores at home and earn a little money. This is a great opportunity to teach them about financial responsibility along with needs versus wants and the difference between goods and services. I love to use this engaging unit to teach personal finance and economics.
This resource includes 5 units that cover important topics like needs vs. wants, goods, and services, earning money, money and bartering, and food production.
Whew - that's a lot! Plus there is a bonus supply and demand activity too! I usually spend 3-4 weeks (or more) on these topics so we can really dig into each concept. About a week on each topic, give or take a day, works really for giving students time to understand and practice these skills.
I love to use the included lap book used as the culminating activity. It is great to show off at an open house or parent conferences too. You can't go wrong with this jam-packed Economics and Financial Literacy resource!
5. Time Concepts: Past, Present, and Future
The concept of time can be a confusing one for kiddos in the primary grades. They are often confused about when tomorrow is or when yesterday was? And getting them to understand how long 5 minutes is - well that's just another story. But instead of focusing on the quantity represented by time, we can start more general with the ideas of past, present, and future. Before you know it they will have a good grasp of the vocabulary and be spouting off their new knowledge to anyone who will listen.
The Past, Present & Future Bundle is a collection of all the best activities I've used to teach these abstract concepts. I've saved you the time of the lessons that flopped or just led to confusion and pulled in the only activities I use to teach these concepts now.
This unit includes vocabulary and definition cards, picture sorting cards, an interactive past, present & future mini-book, as well as 3 worksheets and answer keys for identifying past, present, and future.
These are engaging hands-on activities that your students will love! I like to introduce these as a whole class during our lesson. Then, I move them into our center rotation so that students get individual practice and review of the concepts.
Save these First Grade Social Studies Ideas
There are a lot of resources and ideas here! In many schools, these concepts cover almost an entire year of first-grade social studies. Pin this to your favorite classroom Pinterest board so you can quickly and easily come back throughout the year as you are planning your social studies lessons.
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