Memoria Press States and Capitals Review: Our Summer Geography Course

I thought I’d mix up our standard summer school routine (music, math, and reading) by adding a fun course: U.S. Geography! Who doesn’t love maps and studying geography? I found States and Capitals in the Memoria Press catalogue this past spring and decided it was time for my elementary student to start learning her U.S. states. Between the colourful flashcards, the maps, and the trivia, it’s not been too difficult to get it finished. It has been a great addition to our light summer school schedule this year. If you’re thinking of getting it done in approximately three months, here is a mini review.

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Why US geography for summer school?

Our school year is intense. We commit to a rigorous academic schedule and a handful of carefully chosen extracurriculars. If there is a subject or course I can knock out in the summer when I’m already planning on keeping a light academic routine, then I’ll take it. Knowing your country’s geography is important, obviously. But I don’t think it requires an entire academic year. I knew we could get it done in less than three months, so that’s what we did. It’s all about leveraging those summers!

What does the Memoria Press kit include?

I ordered the States and Capitals kit from Memoria Press, so it came with a student workbook, a teacher’s manual, flashcards, the book Don’t Know Much About the 50 States, and two small “desk maps”.

The student workbook introduces the states by region, then one state per page. There is room to record the state abbreviation, capital, date it entered the union, then a fact about the state. The entire bottom part of the page is the outline of the state for the student to mark landmarks and physical features.

The teacher manual is a copy of the student book with answers, plus quizzes and tests (which are just listing the states, their capitals, and abbreviations).

Evaluation

Because we used this as a summer course, I wasn’t too interested in formal evaluation. Using our United States map placemats and quizzing my daughter over lunch or asking her state capitals while driving around town (whenever I saw an out-of-state licence plate) was enough for me. She’s seven. She’s going to be seeing this material in future. That being said, the few regional quizzes we did were a great way to practice penmanship. We did not do all of them, it just depended on the week.

girl reading student atlas to use with US geography — She used the atlas to explore US geography: mountain ranges, rivers, deserts, etc.

How we actually used States and Capitals this summer

We ended up supplementing with several other books and an online quiz game, but used the student workbook as a spine. Most days, my daughter would review the flashcards of the states she had learned so far, then fill in her workbook about a handful of new states. At first she used the book that came with the course, Don’t Know Much About the 50 States, but then ended up using DK’s The 50 States instead to learn about the new states.

At the end of the workbook, after all of the states have been learned, there are a few questions about landforms that require looking at a physical map. It is expected that students are marking the individual state pages with landforms as they move through the book. We didn’t use the book this way, at least not for all the states. Instead, we moved through the individual states quickly then spent time looking at North America as a whole – rivers, lakes, mountain ranges, tallest peaks, etc. – to answer the questions in the back of the workbook.

We also made a point of using our United States map placemats that I bought a while back. The front has all the states labelled, but the backside was not labelled. This made it fun and easy to quiz her during lunch time on where each state is that she’s learned so far and what the capital is.

kid using US map placemat to use with geography — The student atlas and our placemat we love.

What I Will Do Differently Next Time

If you were to ask me about the Memoria Press kit specifically, I would be honest and say it’s not worth it. Instead of the kit, I would only buy the student workbook and the flashcards. The teacher manual had nothing of real value to add. The student workbook had unlabelled regional maps you can copy and use to quiz students as well as Teacher Guidelines on the very first page.

Also, the book Don’t Know Much About the 50 States was not as good as the DK book The 50 States. The DK book had photographs (see below) and the other book only used cartoon illustrations – not my favourite for anything school-related.

cover of a US geography book of the states

So if I were putting this course together for a new student, my shopping list would be:

States and Capitals student workbook from Memoria Press
State capitals flashcards
DK’s The 50 States
a Merriam-Webster student atlas
a fun US map placemat

page spread of the geography book showing Kansas — My daughter preferred this DK book to the one that came in the kit.

TLDR: Pros vs Cons

If you’re on the fence about using States and Capitals from Memoria Press to teach US geography, here is my final list of pros and cons.

PROS

The student workbook slows you down and forces you to take time learning something about each state. As opposed to just drilling flashcards of capital cities. You can take your time with this (they suggest one state per week), or move at a faster pace like we did.
There are several regional maps to copy, label, and colour in (found in the student workbook as well as the teacher manual).
The flashcards that come with this are great – colourful and simple.
It can be intimidating that the teacher manual has no lesson plans at all – but the flip side of this is that it is very easy to adapt to an accelerated summer course.

CONS

This is not a geography course in that it does not teach the geography. It’s just expected that students will look up each state and colour in the landforms for themselves. So if you don’t buy the physical map in the kit, you must have access to some kind of atlas or physical map of the US in order to complete the workbook. Not necessarily a con, just something to be aware of before diving in.
Don’t Know Much About the 50 States is very shallow and uses only illustrations instead of photographs. So a better supplemental book would make this course richer if you want to get more out of it.
The Memoria Press kit itself isn’t worth it to me – I would stick to just the student workbook and the flashcards. Then add your own supplemental books. (See my shopping list above.)