Stately Ideas for Learning

    Since I am writing a geography curriculum for high schoolers, I was thinking the other day about different ways to learn about the states and countries for all ages.  One thing I thought about was making state cookie cutters and using them in a variety of ways to teach the states and their shapes.  Unfortunately, they've already been made, so I can't corner the market on those.  I found some on Amazon, but there are a number of sites that sell them.  One site I found also had cards with state information that went with the cookie cutters.

     Anyway, allow me to share a few ideas for learning about the states and countries.  I hope you find some of them useful.  I will post more when I have time.

1.  Purchase state cookie cutters and make cutout cookies with them.   After icing the cookies, let your child use a small tube of icing to write the state's abbreviation on the cookie and place an edible decoration where the capital of the state is located.  Learn and enjoy the cookies. If you don't want to make cookies, you can use the state cookie cutters with Play-Doh after rolling it out flat.

2.  The following website provides a lesson plan for learning about country shapes using Play-Doh:  http://www.hasbro.com/playdoh/en_US/discover/teachers/pdf/7F53D612-D56F-E112-497CE221E79B18F7.pdf.  You can adjust this lesson plan to learning about the U.S. states as well.  

3.  This is a great state with games and interactive learning about the states:
http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/web_games.htm.

This is all for now.  

Feel free to share your ideas.