Geography

We have a board game called Ticket to Ride, and the board is a map of the United States with train track spaces over it. The game is way over a toddler's head, but my little one loves playing with the train pieces.  At some point, we made up a game together with the pieces where I would ask for a ticket to one of the states in which we have family, and I would then take a train and move it to that state.  She loved playing ticket holder, and through time, I realized she was learning where the different states were.  I started slowly expanding the states that we went to by train.  I realized the game board map wasn't the easiest to read because of all the train track spaces, and so I checked out a kid atlas at the library.  I started pointing to rows or lines of states and saying their names rhythmically ("North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas!") and when said in rhythm like that she picked up their locations really quickly.  She now can locate about 15 states.  Her favorite list is "Washington, Oregon, Caaaaaaalifornia, and Nevada," which she finds to be hilarious.