How To Study The 50 States In The United States

It may amaze you to hear that many high school and college graduates know very little about the United States. It does not matter if they have graduated with honors or if they are teachers, they still have very little knowledge about the United States, which is quite ironic when you stop to think about it.

Homeschooling parents are able to emphasize knowledge of the United States and each of the 50 states that is located therein. It is also possible to place emphasis on each state's capital and flag as well. This information should be considered important to those of us who live in this country. While you may think that this will be difficult to do because you are trying to study history in a chronological fashion, I encourage you to read on so that you can see that this really does not have to be as difficult as you may think.

What you will need to do is make your child a set of flashcards either on your computer or with a marker. Regardless of how you do it, you are going to need to create 300 different flashcards. The reason why you will need to create so many is because you will more than likely want to create a set for each state. However, you can simplify this by creating only 1 set of cards with each of the states' names on different index cards. From there you are going to want to write down on different index cards the abbreviation for the state, what the name of its capital is and what its flag looks like.

Here is how you would want to do this if you were going to be using 300 index cards...

You will want to begin by writing each of the state's name on 3 different index cards. In other words, you will want to make 3 index cars for Alabama, 3 for Alaska, etc. This will use up half, or 150, of your index cards. You will then use 50 more index cards to write down each state's abbreviations. Take a moment to place these cards with 1 set of the index cards upon which you have written the names of the states. Now take out 50 more index cards upon which you will want to write the names of each state's capital, 1 on each index card. You will want to also pair these with a set of state cards. For the last set of 50 index cards that you have, you will need to print out a copy of each of the state's flags from your computer and glue them onto an index card, 1 state per card. After you have done all of this, you may want to laminate the index cards or at least cover them with clear contact paper as this will prove to be an invaluable resource whenever you want to study the 50 states. So, if you laminate them, you can be sure that they will be useful for many years to come.

Now that your cards are created, they can become a little extra thing that you can use for homeschooling your children. They can be used any time that you have a few minutes to review them, for instance while you are waiting for an appointment or waiting for your food to be served at a restaurant. You effectively have created a state and abbreviation matching game and a state and flag matching game. However, you can use these index cards however you like as that is one of the great things about homeschooling: the flexibility.