North American Countries Wheel Spinner

This wheel picks a random North American country — a region that runs from Canada down through Central America and out across the Caribbean, and is much larger than the three countries most people name.

All 23 North American countries are on the wheel, which means the Caribbean states and the Central American isthmus are in the draw rather than just the three big ones.

Most people stop at the first three, which leaves out about twenty countries. North America as a continent includes all of Central America — Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama — and the Caribbean nations, from Jamaica and Haiti to Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Bahamas.

That makes this a good wheel for correcting a common misconception. Ask a class to name North American countries and you will usually get three answers and then silence. Spin a full wheel a dozen times and the map they are carrying around gets noticeably bigger, which is a more durable lesson than being told the same thing.

Add the Central American and Caribbean nations before using it for assignments, and turn on remove-after-spin so nobody draws the same country twice.

What is on the wheel

All 23 of them, already loaded:

• Antigua and Barbuda
• Bahamas
• Barbados
• Belize
• Canada
• Costa Rica
• Cuba
• Dominica
• Dominican Republic
• El Salvador
• Grenada
• Guatemala
• Haiti
• Honduras
• Jamaica
• Mexico
• Nicaragua
• Panama
• Saint Kitts and Nevis
• Saint Lucia
• Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
• Trinidad and Tobago
• United States