Our co-op is having a US geography bee in November, so I decided to spend this term doing a state study.  I've tried to keep it pretty simple.

Here is a copy of my state sheet in Word.  Uploading it means it is not formatted right--you have to move the state abbreviation to the end of the line.

The Netstate.com website has all the state information you could want as well as outline maps for each state.  Download the outline and replace it in my state sheet to make sheets for all 50 states.

We are learning just the bird, flower and tree for each state, and I found a fun and easy way to do this.  First, you need a wonderful little bit of freeware called MWsnap that allows you to take a snapshot of a browser window and save it as a jpg file.

Next I make the cutout sheet by doing the following:

1. Download the images of the bird, flower, and tree from Netstate.com for the states in one area of the country all into their own folder on the computer.  Rename the file as the name of the bird or flower or tree.
2. Display the directory using thumbnails, so it shows all the pictures in the directory.  I even line them up so the top row has birds, middle row has flowers, and bottom row has trees.
3. Use MWsnap to convert the folder display to a jpg image.
4. Print it out and you have a 8.5x11 sheet with the little pictures of each state bird, flower, and tree like the picture at the top of this page (click on it to see a larger version.)

Cut them out and paste into the space between the map and the first line of the state sheet after filling in the rest of the information.