Difficulty: Easy
Playing geography classgamesis an excellent way to engage students and keep them on their toes.Games that lighten the mood make great fillers for the end of the period when lessons are completedearly, or a game day at the end of the week can be offered as an incentive or reward for good behavior and hard work.

Fill in the Blanks
Allow your students to test their memory with a blank map. Provide each student with a map thatoutlines places, but be sure the map does not label specific names of places. Start the timer and therace is on. Have students fill in the names of as many places as they think they can recognize. Withyounger students, you can do something easy, such as oceans or continents. With older students,have them try European countries, American states or major cities of the world. Display a map after thegame and have students check how many they got right.

Geography Chain
This game can be played with upper elementary students to highschoolseniors, and will helpfamiliarize students with the names of different places. Start the game by naming any geographiclocation. Instruct the next student to name a location starting with the last letter of the one you named.The next student must name another location starting with the last letter of the previous place named.For example, you might start with Mississippi, the first student might say Ireland, the next Denmark, thenext Kenya, the next Asia and so on. Students are out when they fail to think of a place in an allottedamount of time, or if they give a place starting with the wrong letter. For instance, if someone saidArkansas, and the next student said Washington, he would be out. If you play this game regularly, andthrow in a small prize for the winner, you might actually find students looking up places in their booksand trying to memorize them so they will improve their chances.

Country Anagrams
This game helps to reinforce a student's memory when it comes to the names of different countries.You can offer each individual student a list of scrambled country names that they have to unscramble.Alternately, you can make it a team race. Split the students into small groups and write countryanagrams on index cards. Put the cards into bags and give each team a bag containing identical cards.The first team to unscramble all the anagrams wins.

Decoding Geography
Have your high school students practice using longitude and latitude lines with relay races in theclassroom. You will need to divide students into teams for this game. Make copies of a map and hangone map per team on the board. Write coordinates on index cards and make a set for each team. Ongo, the first member of each team has to take a card, hurry to their map, find and mark the location,then race back to the team to tag the next person into play. The team that correctly finds all thelocations first is the winner.

Where Am I?
Upper elementary and middle school level students will begin to develop a mental image of whatdifferent places are like by this simple guessing game. Hand each student a map of the United Statesor the world. Begin to describe a location. For example, if thinking of Florida, you might tell them that inyour mind's eye you are lying in the warm tropical sunshine, you had fresh squeezed citrus fruit for breakfast and drove by swamps with alligators. Give them one detail at a time, allowing them time toguess after each tidbit is revealed. Details may include climate, topography, wild life, vegetation,famous landmarks, resources or cultural references.