This week for works for me Wednesday, we are asking other bloggers for their help on what works for them…
We’re working on learning the states & capitals this month in school. Right now, I have Munchkin learning 3 states with their capitals per day. Plus, we review what we learned the prior day. We are doing this by writing out the states with the capitals (her penmanship practice for the day). I also want to incorporate geography into this by maybe placing the states in the proper location as we learn them?
As you can see, I’m not sure the best way to go about doing all of this. So, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
I actually have a US map on the wall that I bought from walmart, it’s laminated so sticky fingers don’t destroy it. We take turns while waiting to get dinner on the table going and picking a state and then finding the capital. Or I pick a state and have them race to find the capital and location.
we’ve used a combination of things…one is a book and game called “The Scrambled States of America”…we’ve also done some free online games to learn the states.
It’s also helpful to learn the states in some sort of order — for example, alphabetically or in a song. When we were in grade school, we learned a song called “Fifty Nifty United States” where all the states are sung alphabetically.
As for state capitals, that’s something my father would teach us/quiz us on on long car trips.
For Christmas our kids got giant coloring books made by Crayola called U.S. States Activity Posters. Each page has two tear-out posters (my kids are leaving theirs in the book) with one state on each poster. The picture contains the state flag along with two other items that have to do with that state, such as: state flower, state reptile, state tree, state insect, etc. Each poster has the name of the state, the capital, the state bird and the statehood date. It also tells what colors the flag should be. My kids love them. I got them at ToysRus.
I know I had a puzzle that the kids could put together plus we would make it a game in the car while traveling to the grocery store, church, to Grandma’s house, etc… I would say a capital or state and then the child or children would give the answer.
Also discussing why a certain name was given for a capital helped them to remember which state the capital went with.
Hugs!
We have the Scrambled States of America game and book too – they are great! They have really helped. We also did the Flat Stanley project where we mailed around Flat Stanley to other states and charted his progress on a map.
There is actually a little jingle out there somewhere. It is so easy to remember and fun as well.
Try this site: http://www.songsforteaching.com/recall/50statescapitals.htm
I’m not sure that it does the whole song but maybe you can find it somewhere else. Good luck!
P.S. There are several other jingles too!
Here’s another site:
http://www.ilovewavs.com/TV/Cartoons/Animaniacs%20-%2050%20U.S.%20States%20and%20Capitals.wav
I’m a teacher, can you tell?