State of the States

Many of you have witnessed or heard about Tommy's current fascination, but here's the whole story behind the states so that I may record this saga for his "baby book."

Papa Tom sent Tommy a 51 piece floor puzzle of the United States for his birthday in late April. The box said "Ages 6+" I thought it was a cool puzzle, but absolutely thought it would live in a closet for another couple of years. Tommy opened the present, and the box, and that evening he and Tom assembled the puzzle together. Over the next couple of days, Tommy did the puzzle multiple times and shortly stopped asking, "Where does this piece go?" and just did the whole thing all by himself. Cool. "The kid likes puzzles," we thought, and bought him a couple more.
Then he started holding up pieces and asking what they said. We'd interject things like, "We live in California," "Barbara lives in Oregon," "Jennifer was born in Georgia," etc. I would say that by the end of May, he knew the name and location of every state on his puzzle map.
Then we realized Nana had a puzzle map in her garage. And Grandama had one in her classroom which is now in her house. Grandama and Papa hung up a wall-sized map in their living room for a couple of weeks. On the SG schoolyard, Tommy jumped from state to state on the huge painted map and corrected my errors: "No Mama, that's Arkansas, THIS is Missouri." When Barbara was in town and said she was born in New Jersey, we got the line "That's above Delaware and Maryland." Papa decided "above" was not proper terminology for discussions of cartography and we began learning North, South, East, and West, the bordering oceans and nations, and the Great Lakes. Yet, he does not tire of soaking up information about the states. I guess capitals are next.

These are flashcards Tom found in his desk at school. The side Tommy is looking at has just the shape of the state... no text at all. You should see how embarrassing it is when he turns the cards on us and asks us to identify the states by shape!



Tommy is a very cool kid who never ceases to amaze us with the things he can say/do. But he's also totally a 3-year-old in every way possible... which never ceases to amaze us either.

A challenge for you in the Comments - how many songs can you name with States in the title? I think I'm going to work on a playlist. Grandama and I have already started with:
"New York, New York"
"Iowa Stubborn"
"I Want to Go Back to Michigan"
"Oklahoma!"