Have you ever wondered what it’s like in the West? Here are my top 10 places to visit with Arizona with kids.
Little unknown fact, I grew up in a very hot dry climate for 5 years in a special area called Paradise Valley. Seriously it was called that! From Ages 8 to 13 I lived in Phoenix, Arizona and loved it!
We were so lucky to have the opportunity to bring my son there to visit many years ago and share that region of the USA with them. I can’t wait to bring the girls too.
I am very excited to be representing ARIZONA in the Booking Across the USA event where bloggers from across the US have teamed up to offer some AMAZING stories and activities for all the different states!
(Disclosure: We received this book from Blue Apple Books for free. Affiliate links to amazon are in this post for books, all opinions are 100% my own.)
Blue Apple Books sent each of us a copy of their book to read with our children and inspire us to create an activity about our state.
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links to amazon books.
Travels with Charlie: Way Out West by Miles Backer
Check out the other books with Charlie too
- Travels with Charlie: Travelin’ the Northeast
- Travels with Charlie: Down South
- Travels with Charlie: Across the Midwest
Having that connection with Arizona I wanted my kids to have that connection with the State too. Here are a few fun activities that you can do with your child to learn about the state of Arizona and all of its beautiful landmarks.
Here are a few fun images of our family’s visit to Arizona below, look at how young my son is in these pictures, they grow soooo fast!
Arizona Themed Activities for Kids
Research Together as a Family
- Take a sheet of paper and write down the points of interest in Arizona
- Picking one a day research together the important Landmarks
FUN FACT: Original London Bridge was relocated to Lake Havasu City in 1971.
Create an Arizona Research Journal as a Family
- Once you’ve done the research as a family, it’s time to put it into a report.
- Encourage your child to pick on place a day to summarize your research
- At the end of the week, you’ll have a whole research paper about your state.
- Present your portion at the dinner table for table talk
Where’s Charlie Game
Using a cutout or draw a picture of Charlie, create bigger images of the locations in Arizona from the books and place them around the house.
Then have your child close their eyes so you can hide Charlie behind one of the locations. Then invite them to open their eyes to find him and identify the location he’s hiding behind.
Where to find the images? I simply used and printed images from Wikipedia & various images from using image search on Google. Vacation pictures work great too!
Arizona Scavenger Hunt Locations
- Grand Canyon
- Meteor Crater
- Petrified Forest
- Lowell Observatory
- Hoover Dam
- Painted Desert
- Lake Mead
- Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument
- Camel Back Mountain
- Red Rock Canyon
Map of Arizona
Print out a Map of Arizona and label with dots for the bigger cities. We used an AZ map from abcteach.com {Click Here} Then print out the world of the states and encourage your child to place the city labels where they belong.
Main Cities in Arizona
{CLICK HERE} TO PRINT THE ACTIVITIES
Exploring Pink Jeep Tours
The next time we’re visiting Arizona we’ll be sure to use Pink Jeep Tours to take us on an adventure to several of these locations.
They were an amazing tour guide for our Las Vegas Adventures this spring. {Click here} to see their Arizona Tours.
USA Themed Toys
There are so many things to discover in Arizona including discovering about the lives of Native Americans. I’ve decided to separate the two units and hopefully, soon we will share about the ways we learned about the Apache and Navajo Nations.
We chose to focus on the natural elements of Arizona in this Unit.
Additional Activities about Arizona from Enchanted Learning.com
We’re excited to announce that we’ve team up with kid bloggers from across the USA to share with you books and state related activities for each of the 50 States! What a fun way to travel from your own living room with BOOKS! Take a peek at who’s joining us and their activities!
To find all 50 States and Activities
{Click Here}
Oh my goodness, I love everyone of these ideas! I've been to AZ one time and loved it. I can't wait to take my boys there one day. Thank you so much for all the great ideas and being part of Booking Across the USA!
I remember the book you made from your RV road trip Giselle, so many fun spots you visited! Will be fun to revisit with her using some of these activities so she remembers the landmarks she saw.
We have fun visiting family in Tucson when I was younger. You could create a matching game with the landmarks too for non-readers.
Thanks Michelle! I love that these activities work for any location you want your kids to learn about. We hope to bring our girls there soon too, just love it there.
Enjoyed my graduate school time in Tucson getting to travel over most of the state. Like the scavenger hunt idea. Will be working out a way to use with my non-reading preschoolers for our home state of Maine.
That cactus is so cool! Love the variety of activities and that you included Charlie in your pics! 🙂 Would love to visit Arizona again some day.
Such great ideas to learn about Arizona! Fancy you growing up there! We did a mammoth RV road trip a couple of years ago and absolutely loved the Grand Canyon. My daughter was in awe. Thanks for sharing! 🙂