State Study: New Hampshire

Our second state to study was New Hampshire. We've only driven through it when going to Maine so we didn't know much about it.

Books we read

Pages for binders

Colin

Caleigh

Molly (she decided to change the flag a bit)

Colin made New Hampshire easy apple pie. He really liked it and ate almost the whole thing.

One thing we learned was that the first public library was in NH. We decided to get the girls their own library cards in honor of that. Molly was so excited all day. While the librarian was putting the information in the computer, she kept bouncing around asking how much longer until she got her card. She couldn't wait to scan her own card and check out books on her own. Caleigh didn't seem to think it was as exciting, but she has wanted to check out books on her card each time we've been to the library since.

Very excited girl picking out books

See this post for more information on resources we're using and the worksheets.

State Study: Maine

Since we visited Maine for the first time in August, I decided that was the state we would begin with. It's too bad we can't visit every state as we study it. It was really neat to see the things we read about in our books.

Books we read about Maine:

Counting Our Way to Maine
This is Maine
The Little Island
Surrounded by Sea
One Morning in Maine
Blueberries for Sal
Time of Wonder
Discovering Crabs and Lobsters
Miss Rumphius
Maine (From Sea to Shining Sea)
Moose- Lesley A. DuTemple
Maine - William Berchen
See list of books I'm using for all states here.


Sheets for state binders

Molly

Caleigh

Colin

While we were in Maine, Molly saw a lobster and sailboat cookie cutter set she wanted. We used them to make sugar cookies.

Rolling out dough

cutting a lobster shape

cutting out a sailboat shape

Some of the finished products

See my plans for our state studies here.

Hana in the Time of Tulips Unit Study (Netherlands)

Since we were studying the Dutch in history, I thought it would be a good idea to expand on it a little with some ideas from the unit study for Hana in the Time of the Tulips from Homeschool Share.

We read books about the Netherlands, dikes, windmills, tulips, and Rembrandt.

Windmills from DLTK

Notebook pages

We read about Rembrandt's life and looked at a lot of his paintings. We did an activity from Discovering Great Artists about drawing facial expressions.

Molly looking at herself in mirror to draw facial expressions.

Caleigh decided to make this on her own. It's a dike with the blue water on the outside. In the middle are some tulips.

 

They also drew tulips with watercolor crayons.


L to R: Molly, Colin, Caleigh



State Study Plans & Resources

I'm hoping we'll be able to do one state most weeks. Right now I'm planning to do them on Fridays.


These are the books we'll be using with all of the states.

 

Greeting from the 50 States: How They Got Their Names
Our 50 States: A Family Adventure Across America
Wish You Were Here: Emily's Guide to the 50 States
The Train of States
Go, Go America
Kids Learn America
Our Fifty States  (National Geographic)
The Little Man in the Map


I have this workbook. I bought it for the CD, which has some patriotic songs, facts, and songs to help learn the states and capitals. The book has some crossword puzzles, word searches, and matching.
I have this book of outline maps. I'm just taking these out of the book to use on our bulletin board.

The bottom of our bulletin board to let the kids know what we're learning about each week.

Here are some other things I have. I have several of the "Which Way USA?" books and maps from Highlights. I also have some workbooks, a package of blank maps, and the Scrambled States of America books. The other thing is a game. I'm not sure where or when I got it. It's called A Capital Game: To State it Simply It's a Capital Game. It's just some cards you cut apart that have cartoons and puns to help remember the states and capitals.

Puzzles

Games

The cards with the state and capital names in the picture above on the left came from the Dollar Tree. I use them on the bulletin board. As we get through more states, I plan to use them as a game to have the kids match the captials to the states.

We're collecting quarters for each state. I'm planning to get the kids some kind of map or folder to keep them all in. I also got them passports with state flag stickers.


The kids are each making a binder to hold their state information. We may use this for the cover, but I haven't looked around much yet and I'll have to see what the kids think. Links for all of these will be at the bottom. The first page is a map of the United States. I'm having them color each state as we study it so they can see their progress. We're going to study the states by regions so I have a map of each region at the beginning of that section. They also color the state on that map as we do it. Each section includes a map of the state and a coloring sheet that includes the state bird, flower, flag, etc. They may also put in pictures, drawings, postcards, or whatever else they have. They'll also have the sheet below to fill out for each state.

My husband put together things from this one and this one to get what I wanted onto one sheet.

 

Online Resources:

U.S. map
Regions maps
State maps
State coloring pages from Crayola
Book list for each state
List of books for each state
Discover America series guide
Recipes for each state

Games:
Geography Game
Place the State
State Quiz
Games for each state

Canada Unit Study for the Geography Fair

For anyone who knows us or has been reading my blog for a while, you probably aren't surprised that Canada was chosen for our geography fair project and you probably know who's idea it was. Colin wants to live in Canada, where he imagines he'd be surrounded by hockey and find outdoor ice rinks on every corner. 

Since it was our first geography fair, I thought it would be best if they just did one country together. Colin immediately said Canada, but the girls weren't too thrilled with that idea. They named other countries, but never seemed set on one so I talked them into doing Canada. I figured Colin would do more of the work since he's older and should do something he's interested in.   

We used the Download N Go (DNG) study, Expedition Canada. From this we got to watch lots of videos showing different parts of Canada. We learned about a different animal each day, some places there, inventions, history, popular sports, Canadian cities, geography, and holidays.



Some of the books we read



Caleigh made this beaver, a national symbol of Canada, and this totem pole, which were made by the First Nations peoples.

Lego Creations: Colin made the CN Tower and Caleigh made an inukshuk, both of which we learned about in the DNG study.

In addition to DNG, we also used Homeschool Share's Canada lapbook and a Canada mini lapbook from Fortunately for You for our lapbook. I think this is the first time we've ever done an actual lapbook. We usually just add the mini books to our notebooks, but I wanted something they could display at the fair this time.

We made maple cookies with real maple syrup. You can find the recipe we used here.

Kids at the geography fair. Along the bottom of the table, we taped coloring pages for each of the provinces and territories.The kids spent a lot of time coloring them.

Display board: It was Colin's idea to use black and red. Caleigh came up with using maple leaves under the letters in Canada. On the bottom right is a Mountie paper craft that Molly put together. Also on the board: map of Canada, map of North America, flag, popular sports, major industries, major crops, information about what the word Canada means, languages, holidays, animals, and Levi from Children Just Like Me.

On the right, we brought along some of the inventions from Canada. On the left toward the front of the table is a French Canadian counting book.

In this picture, you can see Colin's hockey helmet, a puck, the Lego CN Tower, and a French/English color words matching game.

I'm so glad we did the geography fair. It was lots of fun showing our display and seeing everyone else's. The girls and I weren't too excited about doing Canada since it doesn't seem as exciting as some other countries, but we did learn a lot of new things and it ended up being a good study for us.

In my previous post, I have some pictures of other projects at the fair and Molly getting a henna tatoo.

Ireland Unit Study

We spent the week learning all about Ireland. We used stuff from Homeschool Share and the Download N Go study, Expedition Ireland.

Books we read during the week



We were able to watch videos showing the beautiful landscape of Ireland. We also watched vidos of Irish dancing and listened to Irish music.
Some of the things we learned about:
Geography of Ireland
Animals of Ireland, including Irish setters and Connemara ponies
Famous places, including the location of the Blarney stone and the Giant's Causeway
Irish words
Saint Patrick
St. Patrick's Day
Leprechauns
Sports in Ireland


Notebook Pages
Mini books: flag, map, famous place in Ireland, why do people kiss the Blarney stone, animals, legends of leprechauns, process of making crystal, colors of the rainbow, St. Patrick card (kids got at parade)

We had Irish soda bread and stew, but I forgot to get pictures. The girls painted their own Blarney stones. The kids made leprechauns. We had a fun lunch and celebrated St. Patrick's Day. We also got to go to a St. Patrick's Day parade and see lots of Irish dancing.

Caleigh's is a rainbow (on right). Molly said there was a flower on hers, but I'm not sure what else.

Lunch: leprechuan sandwich, pot of gold, lime punch

Molly did some graphing with Lucky Charms. I got the graph here.

Caleigh is supervising Molly for me to make sure she doesn't go wild just putting anything or eat them.

Russia Unit Study

When I saw we were going to be studying Russia for history, I wanted to do the Five in a Row book, Another Celebrated Dancing Bear. I was disappointed to find that our library system doesn't have it. I was able to find a lot of other good books for our unit study though. The ones the kids enjoyed most were The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship, The Littlest Matryoshka, The Magic Nesting Doll, A Perfect Pork Stew, Babuska Baba Yaga, and Babuska's Doll.
We read a few non-fiction books to learn more about life in Russia and the history.
We read Peter and the Wolf, listened to some of it, and watched this cartoon.
We also read about Tchaikovsky's life and discussed the ballets he composed.

We attempted to make blini, but it didn't turn out very well. I first tried to use my griddle, but the batter was so thin that it just spread too much. When I tried a pan, they burned or fell apart when I tried to flip them. We ended up getting enough for a taste test. Colin first said they weren't good, but then he continued eating and decided it was okay. Caleigh only touched it to her tongue, but she decided they bad.

My husband went to a Russian market for me to look for plain nesting dolls that I found online after it was too late to order for this week. They said they only have them around Christmas so we didn't get any, but he did bring back this box of candy he found there.

So far they've only tried this one piece that looks like a little cone, but they all liked it and are looking forward to trying the rest.

Since we weren't able to get the other nesting dolls, we made these from cardstock. The templates came from here.

Colin's nesting dolls

Caleigh's nesting dolls

This is Molly's. She was feeling a little lazy that day so she only wanted to color the biggest doll.

This is what they look like when they're all nested inside the largest one.

Here are their notebook pages. They did books for a map to locate Russia, the flag, landmarks, Matryoshka dolls, a wheel to show things Russia is known for, the religion, and onion shaped domes.

For our books and other ideas, I used the following:
Russia Lapbook
The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship Unit Study
Another Celebrated Dancing Bear lapbook pieces