Making a Game of Geography

Sheila Lennon has found a great online educational game. The object is to place the outlines of the fifty states in the proper place. The margin for error is a little unforgiving, especially for the interior states, but it's a great way to straighten out the country's layout in your mind. (Almost as effective as staring at election night returns watching for miniscule percentage changes.)

One thing that the puzzle captures especially well — because each state begins off the map and because you actually have to place it where it belongs — is the differences in size. It's one thing to know that Rhode Island is a tiny state; it's another to try to drop the speck within a few miles of its proper place on a map of the United States.