States and Capitals

[dfsteacher]

Any fun ideas on how to teach 3rd graders the states and capitals?????????

[jsfowler]

My son is in third grade and they just took their final test today - 100% - Yeah!! I don't know how fun this is, but it really helped my son.

Each week, he had 6 states and capitals to memorize. On Monday, he would bring home a blank map with those 6 states colored and labeled. At school, they had different stations set up - flash cards, puzzles, interactive website where you clicked on the state for info, etc. They also spent the first 5 minutes of social studies class each day in pairs quizzing and helping each other. My sons favorite thing was the puzzle because it had a symbol (KY - coal, TN - guitar, etc) for each state. He now knows all the states, capitals, and something that state is known for.

Like I said, not technically "fun"...but effective. I liked how they had stations and set aside time each day for peer tutoring.

[busbus]

This is not new - I always begin with my state and branch out to the states surrounding us.

I live in Pennsylvania. The shape of my state is like a house with a chimney. So this is what we do - identify the state(s) on our roof, at our back door, at our front door and in the basement (not truly "our" basement). After using the wall map, we transfer information to a blank map of the contiguous states. If the topic is States and Their Capitals, this is the information that we transfer.

Beyond identifying the states that border our state, we identify the region in which these states are located and identify the other states in our region. We branch out to a region that connects to our region and identify the states and their capitals in this region, and so on and so forth.

To reinforce and review, we create games and other activities based on our map explorations - in this case, just states and their capitals.

[anyalee]

Thought I'd throw in my .02 here...I am an 8th grade teacher & expect my kids to know the names of the states by the end of the year. I didn't even try with the capitals this year, but I did make them learn the PO Boxes. I was pretty upset with their lack of memory from whenever they did learn these previously. Plus it's not standardized at all schools, so some kids had absolutely NO idea!

[kjem]

Do you know the Fifty Nifty United States song? I still sing it when I need to make sure I have all the states for something.

Oooooh-and here's Wacko's State Capital song. I've always wanted to teach my kids through these songs-I'm glad I found this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNUDDaEOvuY

[SS Rocks!]

Oooooh-and here's Wacko's State Capital song. I've always wanted to teach my kids through these songs-I'm glad I found this:



I memorized this song as a kid. What a geek. :o