My kids are in the stage of asking “why?” and “how?” and
frequently stump me with their curious interrogations. Recently
my daughter asked: “How are globes made?” “Well, they take some
cardboard and cut it so that they can glue it together into a
sphere….” She was dubious and wanted more specifics. Luckily I
found this wonderful clip on youtube that shows globes being
made in the factory. After her questions were answered, we began
our craft:First, you’ll need a globe template. There are many
high-quality templates that can be printed on-line. Here is one
from Canon’s Creative Park, and another from the Royal Museums
Greenwich. This was hard for my 7 year old, and was very
collaborative between us! Before cutting out the template, do
you notice how there is white space between the edges at the
poles? This is a great time to reinforce how hard it is to make
a globe into a flat map: to create a flat map, cartographers
need to stretch continents to fill in these white spaces. The
continents and oceans at the nor