Awhile back my mother-in-law gave me a pile of old National Geographic maps, and they have been sitting in the basement waiting to be used. I bought a large, black, zippered artist portfolio to store them in last year and now I've finally gotten around to doing something with them.
First I actually unfolded them all and placed them into the portfolio. Excited about using them for homeschooling and knowing how easily maps get torn, I wanted to laminate them. Dh on the other hand did not want to do anything to them in case a collector was interested in buying them some day (which also means using extreme caution when showing them to the kids). I mused about having map-sized sheet protectors, and then I realized that they must make something like that to protect nautical charts from getting damaged at sea. And I discovered they make them for blueprints, too.
I ordered them through
Engineering Supplies. They are certainly too expensive to use like sheet protectors for every map, but I bought one medium and one large one in which to put whatever map I am currently using. They come with reinforced holes in the edging to hang them and a zip-lock seal on one edge. Being plastic, we could write on them with dry or wet erase markers and then wipe it away for the next map. And because these maps are double-sided I can easily make use of the information on both sides of the map.
Yesterday I cataloged the stack of maps so I knew what I had without having to sort through them. It turns out I have 105 maps dating from 1975 to 2009. There's a lot of history information in those maps, as well as earth and space science, and, of course, geography. I really could have used the Great Peoples of the Past maps last year with our ancient history study, so now I am ready to pull one out that relates to whatever we are studying. Maybe I can use them in much the same way as I do music or art study--hang them up and spend time each week just looking over the make becoming familiar with the geography and history of the world.
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