Even small children can learn to read simple diagrams or plans of their homes, or maps of their bedrooms, school, neighborhood, and community. When your children play with toy trucks and cars they are learning the use of symbols. Take advantage of this opportunity, and either draw a rough map of a highway, a city, or a park over which they can run their trucks, or pretend that things around your house are trees or fields. Point to symbols you use in your daily life. For example, you stop at a red light, and go on the green.
Red means stop, green means go.
If you are upstairs in a building, look out the window and ask your children how the world below looks. The higher up you go, the smaller things on the ground appear, just like looking at a map. Before taking a trip, use a map to show your children where you are going and how you plan to get there. On the map, point out other routes you could take and talk about why you decided to use a particular route. Encourage children to draw and make their own maps.