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Welcome to 5 Days of Homeschooling for Free, a 5-part series. For the next 5 days, I will be sharing a subject by subject list of free resources you can use in your homeschool! Today, we are looking at a fun way to use state maps and travel guides for teaching U. S. geography. Other articles in this series covermath, science, history, and writing. Let’s get started!
You might have noticed we travel quite a bit, both around our state and around the U.S. One of the things that we often do, if we have enough advanced notice, is order a state’s travel guide package before we leave on a trip. Most states offer an online form to request a printed package of information about the state, as well as road maps. Of course, the purpose of these kits is to promote tourism within the state, but because we have managed to collect quite a few of these kits, we discovered they can serve a dual purpose — tourist info AND educational info when studying the geography of each state!
Most of these kits provide lovely full-color books filled with pictures and descriptions of the best the state has to offer in field trips, historical landmarks, state and national parks, and more. The road maps are an invaluable tool in learning the lay-out of the land and of course the cities and towns. Sometimes the maps also have interesting facts and tidbits to help you learn even more about the state.
I’ve compiled links for the travel guides and roads for all of the states and our nation’s capital for your convenience.We have travel kits and maps from most states in large storage box. Each state is given their own file folder where all of the travel guides and maps are kept. We use these to help us plan fun field trips when we are traveling, and when we are learning about a particular state in our homeschool. At the very least, be sure to order the kit for your own state.
How to use travel guides and road maps in your homeschool:
Use them as a jumping off point to create a state unit study (learn how to plan unit studies yourself). Choose a state and read through the vacation guide, finding major points of interest. Learn more about each place. Use your map for a scavenger hunt of the places you just learned about. Plot each place on your map. Discover the state and national parks for your chosen state learn more about them. Find them on the map. Plan a virtual vacation — where will you go? what’s the best route to take to make all of your stops?
Other learning opportunities:
Learn about the importance of tourism to a state’s economy. Have your student design a travel brochure based on what was learned from the kit. Use state road maps to learn about how to use maps, including latitude and longitude, map legends and symbols, and compass rose. That should get you started. The possibilities are endless. It’s likely you will be inspired by each individual travel kit — they are all a little different. Some will just send a travel guide booklet. Others will send an entire packet of brochures about sites around the state.
State-by-State List of Travel Guides and Maps
Alabama (guides and brochures– includes map)
Alaska(vacation planner) (map)
Arizona (visitor guide–includes map)
Arkansas(vacation kit– includes map)
California(visitor guide)(map)
Colorado(vacation guide– includes map)
Connecticut (getaway guide) (interactive map)
Delaware (travel guide)(map) (interactive map)
Florida(travel guides and map)
Georgia (travel guide)
Hawaii(visitor guide)
Idaho(travel guide and map) (map)
Illinois(travel guides)
Indiana(travel guides and map)
Iowa(travel guide)
Kansas (travel guide and map)(map)
Kentucky (visitor guides and maps) (interactive map) Staycation Louisville Road Trip Kentucky
Louisiana(inspiration guide)
Maine(travel guides)
Maryland (travel packages)(map)
Massachusetts(visitor guide) (map)
Michigan(travel guide)(map)
Minnesota(travel guides and maps)
Mississippi(visit Mississippi) (maps)
Missouri(travel guide) (map)
Montana(travel guide) (map)
Nebraska(travel guide) (maps)
Nevada(visitor guide) (maps)
New Hampshire(visitor guide and map)
New Jersey(travel guide and map)
New Mexico(vacation guide)(maps)
New York(travel guide)
North Carolina(travel guide andmap)
North Dakota(travel brochures)
Ohio(travel guide)(map)
Oklahoma(travel brochures) (map)
Oregon(travel guides) (map)
Rhode Island(travel guide) (maps)
South Carolina(vacation guide and map)
South Dakota(vacation guide and map)
Tennessee(vacation guide)(map)
Texas(travel guide) (map)
Utah(travel guide) (map)
Vermont(vacation guide)
Virginia(travel guides) (map)
Washington(visitor guide) (map)
Washington DC (visitor guide) (maps) Commprehensive List of Resources for DC
West Virginia(travel guide) (map)
Wisconsin (travel guide) (map)
Wyoming (vacation guide) (interactive map)
Our other favorite tools for teachingU. S. Geography:
Seterra:Seterra is a challenging educational geography game with more than 100 different exercises. Learn about countries, capitals, oceans, flags and cities in Africa, Europe, South America, North America, Asia and Australia, using outline map exercises!
NotebookingPages.com: the sample set you can receive for free by subscribing includes some state notebooking pages. You may want to go ahead and purchase the USA States Pack, after you see them though. If you do wish to purchase the pack, use the codebenandmeUSAfor a 25% discount. We actually have the Lifetime Treasury Membership because we use and love all of their notebooking pages. The state pages are included in this membership.
FREE Passports
Download these free printable passports.
If you found this article helpful, be sure to check out more homeschooling for free resources with these 10 Math Resources Worth Your Time.
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