Book Review: Only in America Activity Book

Summer in the United States is a common time for road trips, and it’s a great time for activities for kids to do in the car and learning about states you might be visiting on your travels.

Only in America Activity Book by Claire Saunders and Heather Alexander focuses on the weireder side of the states, along with activities to make the car or plane ride a little more fun.

The book includes a fruit sudoku game board; fun weather facts; info about some of the biggest, longest, tallest and deepest things in America; a space to make up your own wacky laws; a sports-themed crossword puzzle; cryptid code breaking (and make your own); a math game; facts about weird museums in America; a four-leaf-clover hunt; maze; dino matching; a place to draw something you’d put in a time capsule; a word search with funny place names; a quiz to find words in other words; a diamond hunt; facts about funky festivals (like an annual Jell-o fight); some fun animals, state symbols, largest balls of things, a morbid maze, a number code and a food guessing game.

You’ll also find some fun “would you rather” questions everyone in the car can answer, like would your rather drink pickle juice at Picklefest in Atkins, Ark., or be fed baby food by your blindfolded partner at the National Baby Food Festival in Fremont, Mich.?

As you work through the book you’ll find at least one fun fact for every state, and pass some time on your trip as well.

The answers to any puzzles with correct answers can be found in the back of the book, but lots of these activities are open ended so you can do them again and again or different kids can come up with their own answers.

About the book: 32 pages, paperback, published 2022 by Wide Eyed Editions, suggested retail price $12.99.

I don’t know why Pinterest just suddenly decided I needed to see all the content about task cards and task boxes for kids, but these ideas are great for the classroom to keep in centers or have on hand for early finishers. You can also use them at home as quiet bags or boxes for kids to use when younger siblings might be sleeping, or in the car for a non-screen activity.

Let’s take a look at some fine motor skill task cards and how you can use them to teach kids skills while they play.

Pre-K Pages has a nice set of playdough task cards you can use in boxes or bags with a little tray (or they can just work on the table if they are sitting at a table). Working with clay or play dough is a great fine motor skill exercise, or you can add these to your playdough center if you have one to give them a little bit of direction while they work.

Teaching Mama has a bunch of great ideas for fine motor task boxes, from practicing working a glue bottle to threading beads, using clothespins or scissors, dropping water, finger painting and more. There’s a free printable that shows all the task options she talks through in the post if you want to make your own little boxes, or just keep these ideas on hand when you’re ready to add some fine motor fun to your days.

One of the ideas she mentions in that post is working with a hole punch, and Early Learning Ideas has a whole bunch (the urge to write “hole bunch” is strong) of ideas for printables that help kids practice hole punching, whether it’s a strip with circles on it for them to punch or pictures that include circles for punching, these ideas make it a little more fun to practice this important skill.

My Happy Place Teaching has a whole post about using fine motor task boxes in kindergarten, and her paid resource includes more than 100 task ideas with printables. But if you don’t need 100 boxes you can still get some good ideas from this post about different tasks to include and why and when you can use them. She also mentions using them in the morning while you’re busy with kids coming in at different times, which is a great idea.

Have you read?

Leave a Reply