How To Help Teach Kids About Other Types Of Communities And Mapping

Now that we have explored family and neighborhood communities, it's time to expand our picture to different kinds of communities and how they change over time.

This is where kids begin to notice that not every community looks like theirs, and that’s a good thing! Some communities are small and spread out, while others are big and busy. Exploring these differences helps children appreciate diversity and understand that every kind of community plays an important role.

Introducing Community Types

Kids often have a hard time imagining life outside their own experience. Pictures, books, and videos are a great way to help them “see” rural, suburban, and urban life.

• Rural Communities: farms, wide open spaces, fewer people.
• Suburban Communities: neighborhoods with houses, schools, and parks, usually near a city.
• Urban Communities: cities with tall buildings, busy streets, and lots of people.

Simple class activities can make this hands-on:

• Sort pictures into “city,” “town,” and “country.”
• Have children share what type of community they think they live in.
• Create a Venn diagram comparing what’s the same and different across all three.

Check out this series of booklets about the different types of communities to help kids visualize what they are like. Types Of Communities|Urban Suburban Rural Communities|What Is A Community Bundle

Talking About Change

Communities aren’t frozen in time. They grow, shrink, and change. This can be a fascinating topic for children, but it can also bring up personal experiences if families have had to move because of jobs, housing costs, or other challenges.
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Here are some ways to make this topic gentle and inclusive:

• Use pictures from the past — like “then and now” images of streets, schools, or transportation.
• Ask for ideas about how communities could change in the future — what would make them better?
• Let children share only what they’re comfortable with. Some might love to talk about moving to a new place, while others may prefer to keep those feelings private.

The Changes in Communities: Then and Now project is a wonderful way to guide this conversation. It gives students structure for exploring how communities have evolved, from technology to buildings to ways people travel.

Mapping Across Communities

This is also a perfect time to strengthen mapping skills by comparing different communities. Children can make a simple map of each type: a farm, a town, a city block, and then look at how they’re similar and different.

The Map Skills Activities: Reading Maps, Making Maps, Creating a Community Project resource ties in nicely here, encouraging kids to apply what they’ve learned by planning or designing a community map.

Learning about different types of communities helps children see beyond their own experiences. They begin to understand that:

• Communities can look very different but still meet people’s needs.
• Change is part of life, and it can bring challenges and opportunities.
• Everyone’s community story is valuable, even if it’s different from someone else’s.

This is the third part of our “Growing Our World” series. In the final post, we’ll take one last step outward, looking at our country and the world. We’ll explore how we can help children see their place in the “big picture” and begin thinking like global citizens. 

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