The Ontario Social Studies Curriculum says:
By the end of Grade 2, students will:
– recognize and use pictorial symbols
(e.g., for homes, roads), colour (e.g., blue
line/river), legends, and cardinal directions
(i.e., N, S, E,W) on maps of Canada and
other countries;
I was helping out with some Grade 2 homework the other day, and when it came time to mark the cardinal directions I reached for an old trigonometry text book to show a much more detailed compass rose. Young students can figure out how many points you have each time you sub-divide the compass (4, 8, 16, 32, ...), and the naming conventions for the points also make sense to kids (what's between North and East? North East! What's between North and North East? North North East!).
