Engaging my Learner- Geography

I think I may be more excited than I should be for homeschooling this year. I'm imagining the freedom to make learning FUN all year long without any state, school, or class assessments! It sounds like this teacher's dream come true! TC (our little one) is pretty excited too! Now that he has figured out that homeschooling isn't a secret (love how little minds work) he's been telling everyone we bump into!

I've been planning the beginning of the year, working on curriculum, and trying to figure out how to pick which FUN learning activities to do first! Here is a taste of what we have coming up for our Social Studies curriculum!  This will be our Geography portion of the subject area.

We are set up as a part of a US Postcard Swap. TC designed his own postcard using fun images on Vistaprint. We did a little research and he picked the fun Florida facts we included on the back. We're going to be sending one of these awesome postcards to a family in each state. TC is excited to ship them off, and is LOVING adding a stamp to each one! I already know that dropping them in the mail slot at the post office will be super exciting for him as well. Although not something he will remember and be able to do on his own, we also used this activity as an excuse to discuss the parts of an address.

We have big plans for when we receive all of the fact filled postcards from other states too.

1. We're going to be locating each state on a U.S. map & reading the fun facts. 
2. This will be the "scavenger" portion of our activity. We will conduct a little research to find at least *one* more fact not included on the card - or to obtain more information about a fact he really liked.  (The fact we find will be added to the card on a post-it.) 
3. We will then punch a hole in the corner of each of the cards and loop them on a binder ring. They will hang from the map until all 50 states have been completed.We will review them from time to time.
4. Once all of the states have been completed we will create and play a geography memory game!
5. After practicing with our co-created memory game, we will play a (Mama created) BINGO game (match the fact to the state)!

**Edit** 

My husband told me this morning that he and our son are always talking about which NFL teams belong to which states. He suggested getting some NFL stickers for him to add to his US map along with his postcards. What a great idea hubby! I found these on Amazon and will be adding this to our routine as soon as they arrive!

NFL Mini Round Helmet Stickers