Six pages that follow Santa around the world on Christmas Eve. Page 1 has eight sightings already plotted over Africa: write the latitude and longitude of each one. Pages 2, 3 and 4 are the three legs of his night, flying west with midnight: from the International Date Line to East Asia and Australia, then across South Asia, Africa and Europe, then through the Americas to Hawaii. Each leg gives eight sightings in a table: plot each point, number it, join the points in order with arrows to show the way, and write the nearest city from the city dots on the map. Page 5 puts the night's ten main stops on a world map: plot them, draw the whole path and answer questions about it, such as how many times the path crosses the Equator. Page 6 follows midnight on a line of longitude: it moves west 15° every hour, so find the degrees between two stops (across the Prime Meridian too) and how many hours that takes, then circle the two hemispheres each stop is in. Every sighting is on a multiple of 5°, on a grid line or halfway between two, and the first problem on each page is worked as an example.
Start with a globe: find the Equator and the Prime Meridian, then trace a line of latitude round and a line of longitude from pole to pole. Before page 2, plot sighting 1 together on the board and talk about why the Date Line is where Santa starts. Partners can check each other's points by reading them back as coordinates.
On Christmas Eve, follow an online Santa tracker together and write down the latitude and longitude of a few places he visits. Find where you live on a map and work out your own latitude and longitude to the nearest 5 degrees.
This pack supports the following Common Core State Standards for Mathematics:
© Copyright 2010. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved.
Santa's Christmas Eve flight around the world, tracked with latitude and longitude on real maps. Students read and plot his sightings, join them into his path from the Date Line west, name the nearest cities and work out how far midnight moves each hour.
Tell us what to make next, or build your own with a worksheet maker.
This worksheet is free to download, print, copy, and hand out in your classroom or at home. You do not need to create an account, and there are no watermarks on the PDF.
