NCERT Solutions for Class 5th Maths Chapter 14 Make a map of your school, with a key, and hide some objects on it — Let Us Do
Book page 176 Updated on2026-09-19
Q1.
Make a map showing the different places in your school. Make a key for the symbols used in the map. Hide some objects in these places.
The sample school map on page 176 with its key. A red ring shows a place where something is hidden.
Answer
Work through it in six steps. The sample map printed in your book shows what a finished one looks like.
Walk round your school once with a notebook and list the places — gate, office, classrooms, library, playground, garden, water tank, toilets, trees, benches.
Draw the boundary wall first, as a big rectangle, as though you were looking down from the sky.
Put the gate on the correct side, then fill in the buildings and open spaces in their right places inside the wall.
Invent a symbol for each kind of thing — a small picture that is quick to draw and easy to repeat. Use the same symbol every single time.
Draw the key in a box at the side, with each symbol and its name beside it. The book's sample key has: Gate, Road, Building, Tank, Hidden objects, Wall, Fence, Seat/Bench, Path, Garden and Tree.
Add a direction arrow with N, E, S and W. Then go and really hide a few small things — a marble, a chalk, a leaf — in the places you have drawn.
A school map with its key. Every symbol on the map appears in the key, and nothing else.
Why a key is necessary: A map has no room for long words. A symbol saves space — but only if the reader knows what it stands for. The key is the promise you make to your reader: "whenever you see this little picture, it means this."
Q2.
Mark the positions where things are hidden with red dots or flags. Now, challenge your friends to find the hidden things by reading the map.
The sample school map on page 176 with its key. A red ring shows a place where something is hidden.
Answer
Mark each hiding place with a small red circle or a red flag, exactly where the object really is, and add "hidden object = red circle" to your key.
Hide the objects first, then mark the map. If you mark first, you may forget where you actually put them.
Put each red mark on the correct symbol — on the tank, on the bench, at the corner of the garden. Not near it, on it.
Give the map to a friend with no other clue. No pointing and no telling.
Watch how they read it. A good map lets them find every object; a poor one sends them to the wrong place. Their mistakes tell you what to fix.
Sample answer: "I hid five things: a marble behind the water tank, a chalk under the third bench, a bottle cap at the foot of the neem tree, a rubber near the gate and a button in the garden. I marked all five with red circles. My friend found four. She missed the one at the neem tree because I had drawn two trees the same and had not marked which one — so I added the direction arrow and she found it at once."
The idea behind the game: This is exactly what a real map does. Somebody who has never been to your school can walk in, read your symbols, and find a spot they have never seen. That is the power of a map with a key and a direction arrow.