Last night my family made up a fun geography game. All you need is a map of the United States and at least 3 people to play. You can assign one person to be the judge and use the map to check the others’ answers. Or, if you are playing with someone who is fairly confident about U.S. geography, you can just have someone check the map when there’s a dispute.
Here’s how to play the game. (All this is done without the players looking at a map.)
- The first person picks a state.
- The next person picks a state that borders the first state.
- The next person then picks a state that borders the second state, but cannot reuse the first state.
- If you pick a state that is incorrect (i.e. doesn’t border the state or has already been called.) you’re out.
- Play continues until you run out of states. (You either have named all the states or get to a point where all the bordering states have already been called.)
- The last person to be able to name a correct state wins the game.
An example game might go like this:
- North Carolina
- South Carolina
- Georgia (this is the only choice because SC only borders 2 states and NC was already named.)
- Alabama
- Mississippi
- Tennessee
- Missouri
- Kansas
- Colorado
- Utah
- Nevada
- California
- Arizona
- New Mexico
- Texas
- Oklahoma
- Arkansas
- Louisiana
That would be the end of this sample game because all the states that border Louisiana have already been named. This is a great game for exercising your memory 🙂 You could try to see how many states your family can name without getting stuck. You could also add saying the capital when you said the state. There are lots of possibilities with it.
We had a great time playing this game. The older kids (5th and 3rd) were quite competitive. Even my 1st grader was able to play on some of the states. I think this may inspire the kids to study their maps more.
By Kristen H.