US Presidents & State Capitals Ideas

[Earthmerlin]

Howdy. I'm getting ready to 'formally' teach my 8 year old US Presidents and US states and capitals. We've dabbled in both subjects up to this point but I like the idea of solidifying this information at this point.

 

Regarding presidents, we've read some biographies and looked at visual encyclopedias. I just ordered a kids' book on presidents, a couple card games, and a coloring book. I was thinking of incorporating a homemade timeline of sorts & having her place a few cards on it at a time. In honor of Presidents' Day, she is research Teddy Roosevelt and I'd like to explore (if not [partially] memorize) 'O Captain, My Captain' and the Gettsburg Address.

 

Regarding states, she knows a song that alphabetizes them. We have a map she adds state quarters to. We play states-capital Sequence plus Scrambled States and Great States. I always point out places on a map or globe. I just ordered flashcards and a bingo game. We already have a nice coloring & activity book.

 

So....what has worked for your children at this age (8) in getting them to memorize such information? I'm obviously not looking for 100% recall but a decent amount is a good starting point for me. I lean towards games and 'fun' stuff. Visuals are always great too!

Edited February 11, 2018 by Earthmerlin

[MDL]

Have you tried the ap Stack the States? It’s great!

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[HomeAgain]

Disney has a fun Presidents app and set of dvds with the same information.  The app is set up like a scrapbook, going through each president in order.

 

And you might check out the Animaniacs.  They have songs for the presidents and U.S states/capitals.

[Earthmerlin]

Have you tried the ap Stack the States? It’s great!

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Yes, in fact we DO have it on her iPad. I had forgotten about it and as so hasn't gotten a lot of use yet (my bad, LOL). Thanks for the reminder though! We shall make use of it now!

[Mommyof1]

Shepherd Software is an online education site. They have many different subjects. They have U.S. States and I think the presidents to. It's educational/gamey.

 

It's free to play

Edited February 11, 2018 by Mommyof1

[wendyroo]

I don't consider it particularly "fun", but Peter and I are memorizing the capitals and presidents via mnemonics and spaced repetition.

 

We use Anki.  The capitals I am just introducing in order of difficulty; we started with our state and obvious/memorable ones (Indianapolis, Salt Lake City, Oklahoma City, etc), then states we have been to frequently, next we have to slowly tackle the less memorable or relevant (to us) states.  We make up mnemonics as we go as well as playing Stack the States, listening to the Animaniac song, putting together Geopuzzles, using state-capital Wrap-ups, etc.  It is a slog, but it is getting done.

 

My goal was for both of us to learn all the presidents in order this year.  I thought long and hard about what would be the most useful organizational strategy, and finally decided to group them between the wars.  Our groups are: Rev. War to War of 1812, War of 1812 to Mexican War, Mex. War to Civil War, Civ. War to Spanish-American War, SA War to WW1, WW1 to WW2, WW2 to Vietnam, Vietnam to Persian Gulf, PG to present.  So that is 9 groups with 3-9 presidents in each.  I then made up a mnemonic to remember each group of presidents in order and I made a picture to remember each mnemonic.  I put all of it into Anki.  First we learn a mnemonic from its picture and drill it until we have the phrase remembered perfectly.  Then we learn what presidents correspond to the mnemonic.  Then we add that group of presidents to our growing list and quiz ourselves until we can list them all up to that point.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  Right now we are up to Nixon.  Along with this method, we are also listening to the Animaniac song, practicing with a presidential puzzle, and I made presidential copywork for Peter to learn more about them during his daily handwriting practice.

 

Wendy

[Earthmerlin]

I don't consider it particularly "fun", but Peter and I are memorizing the capitals and presidents via mnemonics and spaced repetition.

 

We use Anki. The capitals I am just introducing in order of difficulty; we started with our state and obvious/memorable ones (Indianapolis, Salt Lake City, Oklahoma City, etc), then states we have been to frequently, next we have to slowly tackle the less memorable or relevant (to us) states. We make up mnemonics as we go as well as playing Stack the States, listening to the Animaniac song, putting together Geopuzzles, using state-capital Wrap-ups, etc. It is a slog, but it is getting done.

 

My goal was for both of us to learn all the presidents in order this year. I thought long and hard about what would be the most useful organizational strategy, and finally decided to group them between the wars. Our groups are: Rev. War to War of 1812, War of 1812 to Mexican War, Mex. War to Civil War, Civ. War to Spanish-American War, SA War to WW1, WW1 to WW2, WW2 to Vietnam, Vietnam to Persian Gulf, PG to present. So that is 9 groups with 3-9 presidents in each. I then made up a mnemonic to remember each group of presidents in order and I made a picture to remember each mnemonic. I put all of it into Anki. First we learn a mnemonic from its picture and drill it until we have the phrase remembered perfectly. Then we learn what presidents correspond to the mnemonic. Then we add that group of presidents to our growing list and quiz ourselves until we can list them all up to that point. Lather, rinse, repeat. Right now we are up to Nixon. Along with this method, we are also listening to the Animaniac song, practicing with a presidential puzzle, and I made presidential copywork for Peter to learn more about them during his daily handwriting practice.

 

Wendy

Sorry, but what is 'Anki'?

[Earthmerlin]

Wendy, great idea to chunk the information!

[wendyroo]

Sorry, but what is 'Anki'?

 

A free, spaced-repetition flash card program. 

 

You can grab pre-made packs of flashcards from the Anki site, or make your own to study anything (using words, pictures, sounds, videos, etc).  Then, as you study them, the program prioritizes cards you don't know yet and spaces out cards you do know.  So, for example, Peter's card testing the location of Mongolia is next due in November of 2020...he has proven that he really knows that one well!  The Spanish word for scarf, on the other hand, has been tested every day for the last week because he just can't seem to remember it.

 

Right now Peter's Anki deck includes: Geography (locations of states, countries, famous landmarks; state abbreviations; capitals of states and countries), facts about great works of art, kitchen safety, musical notation, personal information (address, phone number, grandparents' full names, etc), poems, quotes, speeches, science (names of bones, classification of living things, eons of geological time), the presidents in order, Spanish vocab, spelling and grammar rules, literary elements, math basics (prime #'s up to 100, fraction and decimal equivalents, divisibility rules, geometry definitions, area and volume formulas, measurement conversions), etc.

 

Even though his whole deck consists of over 3000 cards, on any given day he is only tested on ~30...the ones that he hasn't mastered yet or that the program determines he is about to forget.  It takes us about 10 minutes to test the cards that are due, and I can rest assured that he is making steady, "nibbled to death by ducks" progress in all of those subjects.

 

Wendy

[SilverMoon]

If you like app games, Presidents VS Aliens was a hit here. If you answer trivia about the presidents correctly you get to lob their seal at aliens in the sky above the white house.

 

(I might have played it as much as the kids.)

[TheAttachedMama]

We use Memoria Press States & Capitals.   It is open and go and get 'er done!   It is based on the living book "Don't know much about the 50 states".  It includes learning the location, spelling, capital, and abbreviation for each state.   (Plus, they read about and journal interesting information about each state.)   We paired MPs lesson plans with with ANKI* flashcards (for spaced review) and Shepherd Software.   I like Memoria Press because they are all about mastery of material without any busy work!  

 

For presidents, we are learning them with a little song.   I also found a really neat video series about each president, but I am spacing on the name!   

 

*We use ANKI for ALL subjects daily.   It is our secret weapon for mastery of material.  :) :)  

[Earthmerlin]

A free, spaced-repetition flash card program.

 

You can grab pre-made packs of flashcards from the Anki site, or make your own to study anything (using words, pictures, sounds, videos, etc). Then, as you study them, the program prioritizes cards you don't know yet and spaces out cards you do know. So, for example, Peter's card testing the location of Mongolia is next due in November of 2020...he has proven that he really knows that one well! The Spanish word for scarf, on the other hand, has been tested every day for the last week because he just can't seem to remember it.

 

Right now Peter's Anki deck includes: Geography (locations of states, countries, famous landmarks; state abbreviations; capitals of states and countries), facts about great works of art, kitchen safety, musical notation, personal information (address, phone number, grandparents' full names, etc), poems, quotes, speeches, science (names of bones, classification of living things, eons of geological time), the presidents in order, Spanish vocab, spelling and grammar rules, literary elements, math basics (prime #'s up to 100, fraction and decimal equivalents, divisibility rules, geometry definitions, area and volume formulas, measurement conversions), etc.

 

Even though his whole deck consists of over 3000 cards, on any given day he is only tested on ~30...the ones that he hasn't mastered yet or that the program determines he is about to forget. It takes us about 10 minutes to test the cards that are due, and I can rest assured that he is making steady, "nibbled to death by ducks" progress in all of those subjects.

 

Wendy

Thanks for the thorough explanation and expanding my horizons. I never knew of such a thing! It sounds like something I can totally use in my new focus on having her memorize some information.Thanks!

[Earthmerlin]

We use Memoria Press States & Capitals. It is open and go and get 'er done! It is based on the living book "Don't know much about the 50 states". It includes learning the location, spelling, capital, and abbreviation for each state. (Plus, they read about and journal interesting information about each state.) We paired MPs lesson plans with with ANKI* flashcards (for spaced review) and Shepherd Software. I like Memoria Press because they are all about mastery of material without any busy work!

 

For presidents, we are learning them with a little song. I also found a really neat video series about each president, but I am spacing on the name!

 

*We use ANKI for ALL subjects daily. It is our secret weapon for mastery of material. :) :)

If you happen to remember the video series name, please do let me know! I hope itt's available on YouTube!

[Earthmerlin]

If you like app games, Presidents VS Aliens was a hit here. If you answer trivia about the presidents correctly you get to lob their seal at aliens in the sky above the white house.

 

(I might have played it as much as the kids.)

We actually already have that on her iPad as well. Like 'Stack the States' I had forgotten it, LOL! So it's good that I had already culled some tablet-based sources--now she just needs to use them!😜

[Earthmerlin]

Disney has a fun Presidents app and set of dvds with the same information. The app is set up like a scrapbook, going through each president in order.

 

And you might check out the Animaniacs. They have songs for the presidents and U.S states/capitals.

I couldn't find the Disney app but I did find the Animaniacs song video & it's funny. I am sure she will get a kick out of it!

[Earthmerlin]

Shepherd Software is an online education site. They have many different subjects. They have U.S. States and I think the presidents to. It's educational/gamey.

 

It's free to play

Ahhh, yes. Good ol' Shepherd Software! I used that in my classroom as a teacher. Of course I can use it at home now with my own child. Thanks for the reminder! I remember the level of geography where you not only have to drag the state (or country) onto a blank map but also rotate and properly size it. Good stuff!

[Earthmerlin]

Have you tried the ap Stack the States? It’s great!

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Like I said before, we already have it and so I went on our iPad and got hooked playing it for quite a bit (just to familiarize myself with the concept of the game, of courseðŸ˜). It's good brain food for a middle-aged woman too--hee hee!

[Rachel]

We have a president placemat (it’s missing Trump) and a US placemat for meals. The kids learn a lot just through repeated exposure. We have several YouTube videos they watch for learning the states and capitals too. The CC president song is also available through Amazon music.

 

Seterra Geography is a free quiz program. You can practice regions or the entire US. https://online.seterra.com/en/ We use it on the laptop, but it looks like they have an app too.

[Lori D.]

Yo Millard Fillmore, And All Those Other Presidents -- creates a mnemonic that makes it easy to remember the presidents in order and with a key fact about them to help "anchor" them in history. Worked well here for memorizing the order of Presidents here! 

Yo Sacramento, by the same author, uses the same trick for states and capitals. We found that the Sheppard Software games worked better for us for state/capital memorization.

Stack the States and Presidents vs. Aliens would have gone over VERY well here, if those had been available 15 years back when we were learning Presidents and States! 

Edited July 13, 2019 by Lori D.

[ALB]

We're also using Memoria Press's States and Capitals.  They even have a review book for the next year.  The daily work is easy and interesting, but the hardest part has been memorizing the locations of each state.  It is helpful that they break it up by regions.

[Lucy the Valiant]

This is . . . uh, non-traditional, but . . . we throw a HUGE Presidents' Day party every February and invite a whole bunch of kids to come, with 2 rules: Each kid has to bring a Serious Show and Tell (a presidential speech, a costume, an interesting poster / medal / campaign song / coin / artwork / song) to present to the group, and each family brings  Presidential Snack. I stole (and my kids upgraded) the idea from Family Fun magazine several years ago, and we theme the food (while keeping it respectful): Calvin Kool-Aid, Barack-oli Obama (broccoli), Ulysses S. Ranch, Pierce's Pierogis, etc. 

 

The kids don't MEMORIZE per se (though we annually sing along to the President's Song), but the amount of research & trivia-hunting those kids do is astonishing & FAR more than I would ever reasonably assign. 

 

We play birthday-party style games tossing coins into floating tupperwares, matching presidents to bill and coin currency, Ed Emberly-style artistic representations, fun things with ("Lincoln's") pretzel rods, all crazy stuff. 

 

February is dark and cold where we live, and . . . well, a huge-fun holiday really helps. :) 

[Earthmerlin]

This is . . . uh, non-traditional, but . . . we throw a HUGE Presidents' Day party every February and invite a whole bunch of kids to come, with 2 rules: Each kid has to bring a Serious Show and Tell (a presidential speech, a costume, an interesting poster / medal / campaign song / coin / artwork / song) to present to the group, and each family brings Presidential Snack. I stole (and my kids upgraded) the idea from Family Fun magazine several years ago, and we theme the food (while keeping it respectful): Calvin Kool-Aid, Barack-oli Obama (broccoli), Ulysses S. Ranch, Pierce's Pierogis, etc.

 

The kids don't MEMORIZE per se (though we annually sing along to

), but the amount of research & trivia-hunting those kids do is astonishing & FAR more than I would ever reasonably assign.

 

We play birthday-party style games tossing coins into floating tupperwares, matching presidents to bill and coin currency, Ed Emberly-style artistic representations, fun things with ("Lincoln's") pretzel rods, all crazy stuff.

 

February is dark and cold where we live, and . . . well, a huge-fun holiday really helps. :)

Wow, how creative! I love the food puns! Seriously, can I crash your party this year? ðŸ˜

[mamakelly]

We love Stack the States- paid version. It’s so much better than the free one. My son is also using the States and Capitals songs cd from Audio Memory. I loaded it onto my computer and play it from itunes. I think you can also buy it on iTunes. We have a huge laminated USA map on the window in the school room. I used a dry erase marker to outline the states that we are working on in the song, and circle the capital city. Then we sing the songs while pointing to the states. He’s learned over half of them in just a month

[Twenty4seven]

On 2/11/2018 at 9:05 AM, wendyroo said:

 

A free, spaced-repetition flash card program. 

 

You can grab pre-made packs of flashcards from the Anki site, or make your own to study anything (using words, pictures, sounds, videos, etc).  Then, as you study them, the program prioritizes cards you don't know yet and spaces out cards you do know.  So, for example, Peter's card testing the location of Mongolia is next due in November of 2020...he has proven that he really knows that one well!  The Spanish word for scarf, on the other hand, has been tested every day for the last week because he just can't seem to remember it.

 

Right now Peter's Anki deck includes: Geography (locations of states, countries, famous landmarks; state abbreviations; capitals of states and countries), facts about great works of art, kitchen safety, musical notation, personal information (address, phone number, grandparents' full names, etc), poems, quotes, speeches, science (names of bones, classification of living things, eons of geological time), the presidents in order, Spanish vocab, spelling and grammar rules, literary elements, math basics (prime #'s up to 100, fraction and decimal equivalents, divisibility rules, geometry definitions, area and volume formulas, measurement conversions), etc.

 

Even though his whole deck consists of over 3000 cards, on any given day he is only tested on ~30...the ones that he hasn't mastered yet or that the program determines he is about to forget.  It takes us about 10 minutes to test the cards that are due, and I can rest assured that he is making steady, "nibbled to death by ducks" progress in all of those subjects.

 

Wendy

Wendy, I will be teaching my 7th and 10th graders the presidents this year. We've tried in the past with tricks and songs, but it didn't stick. They're both studying American history and I want to help them organize this information in their minds. I love your idea of chunking the information according to wars. Could you share more information? I'd love to have your mnemonics! (BTW, we also use Anki! Love it!)

Tracey

[wendyroo]

On 6/28/2019 at 1:15 PM, Twenty4seven said:

Wendy, I will be teaching my 7th and 10th graders the presidents this year. We've tried in the past with tricks and songs, but it didn't stick. They're both studying American history and I want to help them organize this information in their minds. I love your idea of chunking the information according to wars. Could you share more information? I'd love to have your mnemonics! (BTW, we also use Anki! Love it!)

Tracey

Tracey, sorry it took a while for me to get back to you; we've been camping for the last 10 days.

These are our groupings and mnemonics:

1789-1817: 4 Presidents between The Revolutionary War and The War of 1812
Wet Atoms Juggling Melons:  
Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison

1817-1849: 7 Presidents between The War of 1812 and The Mexican War
Monkeys And Jaguars Veto Hungry Tyrannosaurus Predators:  
Monroe, J.Q. Adams, Jackson, Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, Polk

1849-1865: 5 Presidents between The Mexican War and The Civil War
Touch Five Purple Burning Limos:  
Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan, Lincoln

1865-1901: 9 Presidents between The Civil War and The Spanish American War
Johnny Grabbed His Gear and Cleaned His Closest McDonalds:  
Johnson, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, Harrison, Cleveland (again), McKinley

1901-1921: 3 Presidents between The Spanish American War and World War 1
Roosters Taste Willows:  
Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson

1921-1945: 4 Presidents between World War 1 and World War 2
Harpoon Cooks Have Roots:  
Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, F.D. Roosevelt

1945-1974: 5 Presidents between World War 2 (and The Korean War) and The Vietnam War
Trust Einstein Kept Just Nine:  
Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon

1974-1993: 4 Presidents between The Vietnam War and The Persian Gulf War
Forgo Cars, Remember Buses!:  
Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush

1993-current: 4 Presidents since The Persian Gulf War
Climb Buildings Over Trouble:  
Clinton, G.W. Bush, Obama, Trump

The pictures we use to remember the mnemonics are rough and corny, but feel free to message me if you would like me to share them with you.

Hope that helps.

[Twenty4seven]

Thank you, Wendyroo! I am going to message you for the corny pictures if I can figure out how. : )

Tracey