How to learn the 50 US states

Start from the anchors

A dozen states place themselves. Put these down first and the rest have something to hang on:

• The corners. Washington top left, Maine top right, Florida bottom right, California down the left side, with Oregon between Washington and California.
• The big shapes. Texas at the bottom, Michigan as the mitten in the Great Lakes, Alaska and Hawaii on their own.
• The Four Corners. The only point where four states meet. Clockwise from the top left: Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona.

Then one region at a time

• The West (13). The Pacific three, the Four Corners four, then Nevada beside California, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming in the northern Rockies, plus Alaska and Hawaii.
• The Midwest (12). A column down the plains: North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas. East of it Minnesota, Iowa and Missouri, then Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana and Ohio around the Great Lakes.
• The South (16). Oklahoma and Texas in the west; Arkansas and Louisiana; Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia in a row; Florida; Tennessee and Kentucky stacked above; then up the coast through South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and Delaware.
• The Northeast (9). Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York, then New England: Vermont and New Hampshire side by side, Maine to their north-east, Massachusetts below, Connecticut and Rhode Island at the bottom.

A few tricks worth having

• Down the Mississippi. The five states on the river's west bank, north to south: Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana. Their initials spell MIMAL.
• Vermont and New Hampshire. Vermont is the one shaped like a V, wide at the top. It is on the left.
• Iowa, Ohio, Idaho. Idaho is in the north-west, against Washington and Oregon. Iowa is in the middle, between the Mississippi and the Missouri. Ohio is in the east, on Lake Erie.
• Mississippi and Alabama. Mississippi is the one beside its river, so it is on the left.
• Kansas and Nebraska. Nebraska is on top. Oklahoma, with its panhandle, is under Kansas.

Practise it

Take one group at a time. Play it on Name it until the names come without thinking, then switch to Find it, which asks the harder question: given only the name, where is it? What you miss comes back sooner in Review, and what you know comes back less often, so a few minutes a day is enough.

• US states: all 50.
• By region: the West, the Midwest, the South, the Northeast and New England.
• Flags of US states, for when the map is easy.