MRS. HOFFMAN’S G.R.A.P.E.S of Me Project GEOGRAPHY LOCATION : 33.8147° North Longitude and 92.4144° West Latitude for Fordyce Arkansas – My Hometown! PLACE (Physical Characteristics): My hometown and the area surrounding it has mainly flat land with a few hills and quite a few rivers. This is the perfect area of the state for HUNTING deer! A lot of pine trees are grown and harvested there too. The county I grew up in has a tremendous amount of land with no homes at all! This land is used simply for hunting and growing trees! HUMAN ENVIRONMENT INTERACTION: How do we depend on the environment? We eat veggies that were grown in my Grandma’s garden, and eggs from the chickens in her coop outside. We bought our milk at the grocery store, but Daddy went hunting a lot for deer and turkeys! (YUM – my favorite!) How do we adapt to the environment? Air-conditioning, cars, and insulation or dealing with Natural hazards/disasters How do we modify the environment? My family had a small farm just for us! MOVEMENT: How do we travel, move ourselves and ideas from one place to another? We all had vehicles, but we also had a four-wheeler and a go cart to get around on the dirt roads. My mom’s dad even had a tiny plane they used to go on vacation! (Mom said she got sick EVERY time. ) REGION (city, county, state, country): Fordyce, Dallas County, Arkansas, United States of America Five Themes of Geography Geography is more than names, dates, capital cities and remote locations on maps. Geographers organize space on a map in ways like historians organize time. Five Themes of Geography There are five themes of geography that help geographers organize space. These themes answer the questions: Where is it? Why is it there? and What are the consequence of its being there? Five Themes of Geography Location Place Human/Environment Interaction Movement Regions Five Themes of Geography The first of the five themes is Location. Just like it sounds, when you talk about location, you mean a point or an area somewhere on the surface of the Earth. Absolute location can be a street address or the latitude and longitude of a place. It’s very specific. The absolute location of New York City is: 40° 42' 51" N longitude 74° 0' 23" W latitude. Five Themes of Geography The Relative location describes the location of a place with respect to other places and the environment. New York City is on the eastern seaboard of the United States. The City was built where the Hudson River flows into the Atlantic Ocean. The Big Apple is in the southeast corner of New York State. Five Themes of Geography The second of the five themes is Place. Place refers to the physical and human characteristics in a location. Physical characteristics refer to mountains, rivers, animals, plants, forests, beaches, grasslands, bodies of water, soil and topography of a spot. Five Themes of Geography Human characteristics refer to the cultural features that people bring to an area. This includes the architecture, religion, food, population density, language patterns, politics, transportation and types of occupations. One of the more unique locations in the United States due to its cultural features is New Orleans. Five Themes of Geography The theme of Place helps to flesh out the information you have from Location. Your school may be located at 1426 Main Street. That’s the Location. But, Place gives you the personality of the school. You learn about the number of classrooms, diversity of the population, what’s in the broom closet, the kind of clothing students wear, the smells in the back of the kitchen, the football team’s record and the test score you’d rather forget. Five Themes of Geography The third of the five themes is Human/Environment Interaction which includes three key concepts. • Humans depend on the environment. Your environment is made up of everything around you. It includes both living and non-living things. No matter where you live, you depend on your environment for food, shelter and clothing. *From the beginning of time, people migrated to find places with enough food, water and shelter for living. Five Themes of Geography • Humans modify the environment. People learned a long time ago how to modify the environment to better their lives. Tools from stone, bone and later metal were used to plow fields and irrigate crops. People continue to this day to build homes, construct dams, farm with larger tools, and interact with the environment in both positive and negative ways. Five Themes of Geography • Humans adapt to the environment. People have managed to find ways to live in almost every corner of the planet. Some people have built their homes on poles to protect them from flooding. If you live in a cold location, most likely you have some kind of heating in your home. If you are in a hot spot, you adapt with a fan, air conditioning or maybe some refreshing iced tea. Five Themes of Geography The fourth of the five themes is Movement. Humans move a lot. And, it isn’t just people. Our ideas, products, fads and resources move around the planet. The process of Movement continues to change. Consider how long it must have taken Vikings to cross the ocean and how quickly it is done today. Five Themes of Geography Yes, it is impossible to comprehend, but it wasn’t so long ago that there were no smart phones, tablets, lap tops or even computers. Yikes!!! The Movement of communication continues at a rapid pace making it easier and faster to keep in touch with family and friends all around the world. Five Themes of Geography The fifth of the five themes is Regions. Regions are areas that have similar, unifying characteristics that can be physical, human, cultural or natural. And, it’s easy to contrast regions with other areas that may have different characteristics. Regions may be determined by physical characteristics such as mountains, plains or deserts. The Louisiana Bayou is known for its swamps, bald cypress trees and ‘gators. Five Themes of Geography Regions can be determined by their human characteristics as well. The densely populated East and West Coasts of the United States are very different from the lesser populated parts of the Prairie States. Some regions are determined by both their physical and cultural characteristics. The Deep South, in the United States, is very different from the rest of the country. In the same way, Mediterranean life is not at all like life in northern Europe. RELIGION/BELIEFS For the purpose, of our class we are defining religion as a common set of beliefs, values, morals, or practices. This year we will be investigating beliefs and values of civilizations and how they impact the lives of the members of that civilization. For this project, I want you to tell me about the beliefs of your family. They could be connected to an organized religion or it could be a set of beliefs your family lives by. I would also like you to give an example of how this impacts life in your family. MY FAMILY’S BELIEFS: -My family believes that spending time together is more important than anything. Our holiday gatherings are not as big as they used to be since all of my cousins have grown up and have their own families; however, we still get together at least once a year. There are well over 100 of us now! -We believe in treating others the way we would like to be treated. You do not have to like someone to treat them with respect. That is something that makes you a bigger/better person! -I was raised to believe that hard work pays off, and that learning never stops. You can never “know it all” and there is always room to improve yourself. OUR FAMILY MOTTO: You will choose a motto from the list you are given or one that you have heard at home that you think best describes your family. Then give at least three examples that demonstrate how the motto applies to your family. “I am who I am because of those who came before me.” My family treasures our elders/ancestors and what they did to help us become who we are today. I have a lot of antiques, photos, and simple treasures from my grandparents, great-grandparents, and greataunts and uncles all over my house. My wedding ring even has my great grandmother and great aunts diamonds in it! I treasure it so much because of the sentiment of it even more than its beauty. ACHIEVEMENTS DIRECTIONS: Below, please list any achievements you or family have made. You may define achievements in any way you like. Some great examples can be big like awards, inventions, and discoveries or small like my aunt makes the best chocolate cookies in the world! It is whatever you and your family consider an achievement. *My Peepaw (Mom’s dad) was the FIRST person to install and complete a telephone system in the U.S. to make a long distance phone call without going through a big operator switchboard! He did that in our little hometown. *My Uncle Clyde (who is only 9 years older than me) was the first one in our family to have a 4 year degree. He graduated from U of A in Fayettville with a computer engineering degree and now is the runs all of the computer systems for St. Jude’s hospitals in Memphis, Tennessee. *I am the first person in my family to have multiple degrees. I have one undergraduate and two (and ½) master’s degrees. POLITICS AND ECONOMICS POLITICS: How does your family make decisions? What type of political system do you have, such as democratic/laissez faire, authoritarian/dictatorship, and anarchy/disorder? Who has the power, and how did they get it? Please provide an example to strengthen your explanation. Growing up in my family, my mom, dad, step-dad, and Grandma made decisions. It really just depended on whose house I was at and who was home with me. My step-dad was democratic because everyone got a say in how things went. Everyone else was more of an authoritarian or dictator… what they said… WENT. They had this power simply because they were the adults! ECONOMICS: How does your family get the things that they need? How do you get the things you need? Do you use direct trade? Do you use a currency to represent value? Provide examples of how supply and demand, specialization or scarcity are apparent within your home and family. Growing up we grew a lot of the things we needed or my Grandma would sew us clothes. My mom’s parents usually took us shopping at the mall for stuff, which was awesome! My step-dad ALWAYS traded things. We used to laugh at how he could start out with something inexpensive and keep trading with people until he ended up with something really nice! We only bought what we need if we could help it to conserve money. SOCIAL STRUCTURE Draw a diagram below illustrating the social structure of your family and how it is organized. Feel free to draw a family tree or more than one if necessary. Once your tree is drawn and your family members are listed, label each of them based on role/characteristic they represent such as, leader, cheerleader, fighter, peacemaker, comedian, authority figure, caretaker, helper, and any other labels that work for your family members. DESCRIPTION: Describe the roles and/or jobs in your family. Are there certain jobs that each person does? Chores? Everyone in my family takes care of each other. My daughter Emma keeps everyone laughing with her silly behaviors and constantly messes up the house with her toys. My husband always makes sure that we are okay. He takes out the trash, puts the laundry in the washer, mows the yard, and sets the alarm every night. I clean the house, cook dinner, and take care of everyone, since I am the mom!