Review: USA Activity Bundle by The Crafty Classroom

My youngest has really been bitten by the geography bug in the last year or so.  He loves to look things up on maps, talks constantly about the oceans and continents and chooses anything we have geography wise to do first in his school day. Even though we are technically on summer break I wanted to continue to review a few things over the summer and include more "fun" activities :) When I saw the USA Activity Bundle by The Crafty Classroom come up to review I knew this was one we HAD to have (LOL) If I didn't try to get an item that was geography related then Issac would have my head (LOL) When I first got the email to download my bundle I was super excited to see that there were multiple activities for us to do! The bundle contains the following items: U.S.A State by State Activity Notebook U.S.A State Bird Art Cards U.S.A 50 State Mazes I have to say that even though Issac loves geography he loves a maze even better.  I printed out all the pages for the three booklets and put them into a 3 ring notebook with dividers.  I liked the idea of putting everything for each state together, but I knew that Issac would like them separate. Besides some of the birds go with multiple states, so that would have made it hard to group only by states. As I knew he would Issac jumped right into the mazes (LOL) He told me mazes are something you don't really have to concentrate on and can go while you are watching wrestling :) I just let him know he could do whichever mazes he wanted in whatever order he chose. This bundle could easily be made into a full year curriculum by adding a few extras to it, but I just wanted to use it for some summer fun. I wanted to sit down with him to work on the state activity pages as well as the bird art cards.  We decided which states we wanted to learn about first. He chose North Carolina since we live here and California because that is where he and his siblings were born.  I helped Issac look up the information that was on the page.  They had us collect the basic information such as abbreviation, state #, nickname, flower, bird and there was an additional section for notes and more facts.  Issac and I worked on coloring the flags together because he doesn't really enjoy coloring. I've found when I do it with him then he's more willing to do it.  We worked on the bird cards last.  I thought these were really cool because they included a pre-colored picture of the bird and then a section where you could color your own.  I thought this was really neat, but honestly we found this to be the hardest part of the bundle.  We decided to color the Northern Flicker first, so we gathered the colors we thought we needed and got ready. I think this was actually a hard bird to color and we struggled to match our colors. We thought we had a matching color and when we started coloring it wasn't right.  There were a lot of details to many of the birds and it was just frustrating for Issac to try and match that. I love the idea of already having the pre-colored birds though to see what they really look like.  
Even though we were on break this USA Activity Bundle was really just summer fun for us.  You could add in the capitals, maybe which presidents came from which states as well as a few readers and have a year long course.  I would recommend this bundle to anyone wanting to work on the states and their basic information with their children.  The bird pages were great in the sense that you could really see the detail and colors and it made it a little easier to try and identify birds in our own yard. This was a fun bundle to do and according to Issac it seemed more fun than school :) 

If your interested in learning more about The Crafty Classroom check out their website and social media pages: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. The crew reviewed several of their products including items for preschool, kindergarten and older children. Below are all the items the crew reviewed this time, so head over and read what all the other moms and kids thought about the sets.  
Alphabet Curriculum Notebook (26-week Curriculum)
Bible ABC Curriculum Notebook (the Bible version of the above)
Learn to R.E.A.D. Curriculum Notebook (36-week Curriculum)
R.E.A.D. Review Pack (28 Early Readers that Correspond with R.E.A.D. Notebook) Can be used as a stand-alone product, if you are not wanting a full curriculum
How to Write a Paragraph