Add a little fun and creativity to your classroom state reports by having your class create State Floats. They will research, report and create in this fun activity. Perfect display for Open House and a great practice for oral presentations as well. Be sure to download the Free State Report Must Haves Printable here!
Memorizing states and capitals as well as assigning state reports are a tried and true social studies activity. Students get to practice their research skills and use multiple sources to help them become an expert on their assigned state. This year, I wanted to make this report more engaging - less about writing a report and more about researching and creating.
To streamline this project I used the Color Your Own "All About My State" Posters. I love these posters because I can get a class set of 30 of these posters and it costs less than ten dollars. This is such a deal! The kids used a variety of resources to research their state including some kid friendly websites and books from our library.
As for their state float, I always use these plain White Favor Boxes for my own kid's birthday parties and thought they would make a great 3D school project. Since we were doing State Reports, I thought they would work perfectly as a template for the student's State Floats. I loved the idea of all of the boxes being the same size, because sometimes kids can get carried away when using a shoe box. I also thought they were the perfect size to display on our desks for Open House without taking up too much room.
I had the students research a variety of state facts and they had to display them on their box. They wrote their informative paragraphs onto White Index Cards and stapled them to one side of the box. Somehow writing on index cards seemed way less daunting than writing on lined paper. They added all other information to their White Favor Boxes using Clear Washable School Glue and Clear Glue Dots®.
The students used the USA Map Sticker Scenes sticker to help decorate their boxes. They loved using the maps that come along with this set as they studied geography, states and capitals all year long.
The kids got creative to make all of their floats including the Small Paper American Flags on Sticks, Patriotic Wire Star Garland, Riverside® Construction Paper and Pennant-Shaped Mini USA Flags. 
It was really fun to watch them get creative and excited about this report. They did an amazing job presenting them to the class and afterwards we had a fun time playing the states and capitals game using this over sized Dry Erase United States Map.
This project was easy to do, meaningful and was a great way to display all of the students hard work. Want to try this in your classroom? You can grab this check list of ideas of what to display on a state float. Download the Free State Float Printable here!
