I believe it is a beautiful thing when you can combine homeschooling and play. State-shaped puzzles are great for teaching geography and also for playing with the kiddos.
I saw a picture of a puzzle magnetized a few months ago. I thought it was a great idea, but our stock RV fridge was not magnetized, so I filed the idea away in my brain for a project to complete someday when we are living more *normal*.
As luck would have it, our RV fridge flaked out on us. This may be one of the best things RV-living-wise that has happened to us. So we replaced our 3-way fridge with a standard apartment-size fridge—one with a magnetized door.
Now that we can enjoy magnets again, I decided to make a U.S. puzzle on hand for our fridge. I got this U.S. map puzzle at a garage sale last year.
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UPDATE: I located another U.S. State-shaped puzzle if you’re looking to complete this quick project.
Alternatively, you can buy an already magnetized U.S. State-shaped puzzle and skip the DIY of this post. As luck would have it, we joined the Classical Conversations (CC) homeschool program when we stopped RVing, and the geography in one of the cycles focuses on the U.S. States. The state-shaped puzzle is super helpful for CC.
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Anyway, I like how it has a vintage, 70s feel. The puzzle itself is from 2002.
Poor New Hampshire and Vermont!! Sorry Pepper ate you! You are forever in our hearts and being composted as we speak! We’re earth-friendly here.
We do have Hawaii and Alaska; I think they were on the freezer door for the photo op.
This is so simple, and I’m glad we did the 5-minute project. The kids refreshed some of their geography skills and learned quite a bit through the multiple times we put it together since it went up.
We got to talk about our route down to Florida from South Dakota and where we stopped along the way. It’s been fun.
So this is obvious and really simple, you just put little self-stick magnets on the back. I picked up a package of magnet strips from Walmart, which was just a few dollars.
That’s it, it’d be fun to do different puzzles, but until we can get Pepper under control and get him to stop eating puzzle pieces, we’ll hold off.
One of these days, I’ll cover our replacing the RV fridge with a residential one. As I said, it was one of the best things we did since being in an RV.
I love this!