Painless Learning World Map Placemat

Good conversation piece for anyone into maps or locations. Laminated were tou can use at the dinner table or just lounging around in the house.

We had Vocabumats, but somewhere along the line, Spanish was melted by a hot pot. So I wanted a nice new "set" of interesting placemats that would reflect the interests of the person who sat in the individual place. My dad loves geography--WORLD geography. He's a US Marine and has traveled all over the place and likes to tell stories about his time overseas. This placemat was my choice for him, and he just loves it. It's holding up quite well, as are all the Painless Learning mats I purchased. It's a little tough to get him to LEAVE the table when dinner is over, because he keeps reading over all the countries (many of which have different names than they did when he visited them). I'm awful at geography, though strong on History, and my dad is glad to point out exactly where the things I know about really happened. These are wonderful!

My wife has a doctorate in education and I teach at a large US university. Although we have the typical branded placemats (Marvel, Barbie, Disney, etc) for our kids, we also include educational ones in the mix. In our work life, we constantly try to expose our students to challenging topics more frequently. In fact, I even encourage my adult students to make "placemats" by laminating cheat sheets and just eat by them. I've found that simply having the material handily nearby and out in the open does wonders for long-term recognition, which is much better than short-term memorization.This placemat in particular is a good start to introduce the map of the world. I occasionally travel for work and my 4yo loves seeing where I'm going. It's meant to be informational for him on his time. When he wants to ask questions about it, we're there to answer them. He's a bright kid so I know he'll know the map better than 90% of adults in a few short years.

I was sort of torn between three and four stars. Was leaning toward three stars b/c this is not really a placemat, if what you are thinking of is a sturdy, but flexible single, plastic mat. It is basically a laminated paper map, so it folds a bit and I'm not sure how long it will last. (I actually think I had this same map at some point in my primary school days...) Decided to go with four stars, though, b/c a) it *does* do the job -- protects our table and gives our toddler something to look at when he's smearing his food around; and b) the level of detail on the map is pretty amazing. So I guess the geography geek in me is leading me to give four stars. I probably spend just as much time examining the map as my toddler...

Great way to learn while occupied eating.The purple used for some of the countries is a bit dark, but I'm not going to knock off any stars for that.

This product serves our purpose as stated in the headline. It's light and easy to keep clean.

I had ordered four of these for my grandchildren and then thought, "wait a minute, I'd like to use these myself!" So I'm loving to learn what I missed in school: placements of countries, each nation of Africa. Glad I treated myself to what I hope will help the grands.

I bought this in order to have an easy way to show my son (2.5 year old) how USA/North America where he lives is separated by an ocean from Europe where his grandparents live. This is a real map with longitudes, latitudes and updated with all new European countries. Colors are little different from what is depicted in the image (the waters are more blue, more primary colors). The flipside has the same map showing outlines of the countries in black and white, but country names are not shown ...I suppose one can practice to recognize the countries by their shapes. Good stuff!