The combination of the main game with the little rewards games is a good way to get kids to really learn these facts. The latter two games can get a bit difficult - it would be nice to see some prompting or hints - I ended up just guessing or trial and error sometimes, which is not what you want kids to be doing if they are to learn these facts. These are nice 'rewards' as they are both fun and still highly relevant to geography. They are timed games that require you to recognize the state, it's location, or know the capitals. These games assess the fluency of your knowledge, reinforcing the facts in a different way. As you collect them, you also unlock a total of three games. When you reach the goal line, you're awarded a state and the goal of course is to collect all of them. So even when just stacking the states, it's making you notice the shape. Getting questions right about those tiny states like Rhode Island gets you nowhere. So you're really hoping for large states like Alaska or those nice rectangular ones in the midwest. First, the stacking itself actually requires some skill, as it really does take into account the size and shape of the states to determine if the states will balance on top of each other. Overall though, this game does a good job of reinforcing the facts. It would be useful to present more of a review so that kids and parents can go over and remember the ones they got wrong (or right too) - just for more reinforcement. 'I am Alaska, my abbreviation is AK.' At the end of each round, it tells you your percent/total correct. If you get it wrong, the correct state will identity itself (i.e.

The goal it to stack the states past the goal line. The game is kinda like a trivia game - for every question you get right, you get a state to stack. Developmental Appropriateness:I did better than I thought I would! So I think this would be fun for a 2nd or 3rd grader who is already starting to learn some of these facts at school or at home.

Stack the states for kids