Your home is inside a neighborhood. That neighborhood is inside a town or city. Places fit inside bigger places, like nesting cups.
Key idea
Your home is in a neighborhood, in a town or city, in a state, in a country (the United States), on a continent (North America), on the planet Earth.
Why it works
Each bigger place holds many of the smaller ones. One town has many neighborhoods. One state has many towns. One country has many states. That is why we say a place is in another place.
Worked example: Which is bigger?
Which is bigger: a state or a country?
- The United States is a country.
- It holds 50 states.
- So a country is bigger than one of its states.
Answer: A country.
Common mistake
Children sometimes think a state is bigger than a country, or that a city and a country are the same kind of place. Use the boxes: a city sits inside a state, which sits inside the country.
For the grown-up. Make a set of nesting labels from paper bags or cups: Earth, North America, our country, our state, our town, our street, our home. Stack them together.