After abandoning our history studies halfway through the year, I chose to jump into a U.S. Geography study. Not only are we learning where each state is on the map, but we are also exploring lots of other fun information like state flowers, trees, birds, nicknames, and interesting places to visit.
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My guide for this study is the U.S.A. Activity Pack from The Crafty Classroom. It includes an activity page for each state, with pictures of the state map, bird, and flower to color in. We are using The United States of America State-by-State Guide as our source for completing the worksheets, but we also picked up the Ultimate U.S. Road Trip Atlas because it had a lot more “fun” facts.
We began our study by reading The Scrambled States of America, just for fun and to get a general overview of all the states. I also picked up the game based on the book, Scrambled States. It’s been fun playing it and helps reinforce what we are learning.
My boys had already been collecting the state quarters and the state National Park quarters, so I decided to incorporate these by adding a second page to our activities. On this page I included a spot for a “rubbing” of each quarter, although we have found that sometimes it’s just easier to draw what the quarter looks like. Since the Road Trip Atlas was full of such fun information and places to visit, I also added a section for them to write about the attraction or area they would like to visit most if they could travel to that state.
So far we have been taking two days for each state, although I may switch to one a day to help us get through more of them this year. We wrap up each state study by watching a short video from the History Channel’s DVD set called The States. I found it for a good deal on ebay, but if you can deal with watching commercials you can find the whole series on YouTube for free.
Now all we need to do is save up money and vacation time to see all these great states in person! #lifegoals!
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