Busy Travelling: License Plates and learning States

This week, my kids and I have been reading "If I were Alive During the American Revoution".  We have been talking about wars, the pledge of allegiance, the thirteen original colonies, and more.  Given that we are driving across the country to Massachusetts, I thought it would be fun to do a license plate game.  On the way here, we tried to remember the plates we saw, but kept losing track.  I wanted to print out little license plates for the kids to fill in, but my printer is still at my parent's house.

We have been chosing paint colors for our house and one day, I was staring at the color strip and was like these are perfect sized for a license plate game.  I took 7 color shade strips for each of my kids' favorite colors, cut them in half horizontally, and glued them to the back of a CEREAL BOX!

For the big kids, I wrote the full names of the states:

For the little kids, I just wrote the two letter state abbreviation.  Each of the thirteen colonies has a star over the top, we are trying to see if we can see each one.  Also, I attached a pen to each board so they can check them off:



I hope this makes the 17+ hours in the car more fun for the kids- wish me luck!

**POST EDIT on July 11, 2011- I was rushing to post this because of course, I was finishing the project last minute before the drive, and I wanted to post photos of the before product, because after the drive, they would be all colored and crossed out.  I realized that the two letter abbreviations for Kansas (should be KS) and Kentucky (should be KY) were written incorrectly on the two letter abbreviation charts.  I corrected them for my kids- corrected photo unavailable because the kids HAD A BLAST with these in the car.  I apologize, and yes, I AM quite certain I am smarter than a fifth grade, just busier and more scatterbrained.  This was such an awesome thing to have in the car, the kids didn't want to go to bed because they were afraid they'd miss something, in fact, they are still in the car, and we have been able to cross off a few more since our trip.  This is HIGHLY recommended for a trip in the car if you are taking one!!!

Flags of the world lesson

Today, a simple folding activity plan turned into a huge geography, matching, and japanese lesson all in one! I never thought of teaching my kids about the flags of the world, until two years ago, when we were driving and my son shouted out, "there's the flag of Italy". And thereafter, proceeded to recognize, Germany, France, Italy, Australia, Japan, and AMerica.

In the Montessori classroom, the child is given a flag to draw and color, then write the name of the country it represents. Brilliant! My kids love it. Here you can see two of Addison's on our fridge, every week, he brings home at least three for us to display.


Today, I gave Nathaniel a book we had bought here in Japan. It is so brightly colored and adorned with our favorite japanese superhero, it was hard to resist, even though I was worried I would not be able to understand the directions. In the back, was a page to cut out and fold into a box, then several pages with cut outs of all the flags represented in the book (about 100 in all). All he was supposed to do was punch them out and fold the box. Instead, for the past hour, he has been punching them out, reading the japanese name of the country, then finding it in our english guide to make sure it's the right name and then putting them in the box. He keeps saying the names out loud and asking me where these countries are and what they are like. So, my simple folding activity has turned into japanese reading and world geography. Here are pictures below: