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I found a really cool game called 10 days in the USA and we play that on "Thinking Game Thursday", it really helps all of us to have a better understanding where each and every state is located. Speaking of Park Days, I thought I would post a few pics of their newest friends and fun they 've had there.īy the way,we are REALLY loving our outdoor classroom! :-) That tells interesting facts about each state that Logan (reading) to us while I drive us to the park on park days to get our social time out with other homeschoolers and I quiz them after each state to see if they were paying attention (reading comprehension).
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#Fifty nifty united states how to#
Now, I've just gotta figure out how to bind it!! We found a fun book Once they are done presenting their papers, we laminate them and are compiling them for an awesome State book (publishing) we can save and treasure forever. This opened even more doors as we learned because most states choices involve a great deal of history, geology, environmental science, political science and random geographical facts about each state. Initially for my younger ones, this opened doors about coins and counting them (Math), and now we are even collecting them. (Speaking of, did you know that 7 of the US states have a cardinal as their state bird?) We also chose to incorporate the state quarters in their research and we learn about why each state chose the design they did. Then I decided to have each child research and present to the rest of us a new state each day (research, public speaking) and they are doing great! We learn basic things like what the state flag looks like, the state nickname, capital, flower, bird, etc. The kids LOVE receiving them and seeing what each child wrote on their card some leave interesting facts about their state, others tell us about themselves.
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When we get a new one, we put a sticker on our map. So we set out a goal to swap postcards with another child in each of the 50 states. I started thinking, "could we visit each of these states?" "Is that a possibility for us right now?" While I decided that may be a bit aggressive of a goal, I realized it might be easier to make friends with people in each state, maybe pen pals and that's when I found "postcard kids", a group of people around the world that happily exchange postcards, many for projects just like ours. :-) While I happily laminated a US Map to decorate our classroom with, I began brainstorming of ways we could bring the map to life. I didn't know then how well it would turn out for us, but since I introduced the "50 States" Unit theme, we have learned SO much and kinda secretly snuck in the basic as well as other subjects simply by covering such a broad unit theme. And while my initial aim when we began the homeschool journey was to focus first on the very basics (reading, writing, math) before introducing any other subject, I realized I could "juggle" it in a sense where we could still do those basics, but perhaps intertwine it with a theme where they would be learning something else interesting and new at the same time. They were desperately lacking in terms of Geography. Louis to meet them, coupled with the weekend trip my Geek comic loving husband took to comic fans favorite convention, Comicon in Chicago when I began to realize these words had no real relevance to my children. I think it was when I was talking to the kids about their cousins moving from Kansas to California, then our weekend trip to St.
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Well pretty quickly into this venture I realized we would do really well with Unit Studies.