Last week of June ~Arizona

This week we went "Trekking Across the US" to Arizona.  I didn't have big expectations because at the beginning of the week I had no idea where we would go and what we would study.  Funny thing is I actually had much more I could have done in a week!

We started our trip pretending to fly from Alaska to Arizona.  We talked about all the things we learned about Alaska and what we saw as we flew over Alaska and then I talked about some of the things we saw as we started our adventure in Arizona.

Here is the cover of our book.

We always color our state and trace over the state name.

Here is the first two pages of our book.

We learned about Arizona's location, the capital, the flag, how to spell and write the name of the

state, the state bird, and the state flower.



This is the close-up of the state location, the state capital in which we did a dot-to-dot,

and the state flag.

This is a close-up of printing the name of the state (older children did cursive), and

a picture we colored of the state bird and flower together.

We also painted a Saguaro Cactus and put some Cactus Wren's on the cactus.

Here is a picture of the next two pages.

We talked about the Hoover Dam and how Arizona participates in a lot

of Astronomy.

We looked at many pictures of the Hoover Dam and talked about why they built it,

how it is used, and how cars can drive over the top of it.  They were fascinated by this! 

They all have decided they want to see this dam.  We then did an ordering puzzle in which

the younger children put the numbers in order to make the dam... the older children had

to figure it out.  They love the challenge!

We then talked about Astronomy in the state of Arizona.  We looked at what an observatory is

and how big the telescopes are.  We talked about what they thought astronomers looked at

through these big telescopes.  We then sorted whether it was a planet or not in which

we found this activity here.

We then colored pictures of the planets and glued them down on black paper.  Each

child had a different way of glueing the planets (some in order and some just put

them all over).  We added glitter glue for the stars.  (My camera isn't working so well

so I apologize on the not so clear pictures.)





The next two pages looked like this.

We talked about the desert on these two pages.  We sorted plants and animals that live in

the desert that you can find here.  We made a book of desert animals using the written

clues from here.  We either did a counting/graphing book you can find here (younger children) or math problems(older children)...why I have two pictures of the pages.  And we made a sandpaper rubbing desert and added plants and animalsto the desert.



Here are our sandpaper rubbing deserts.  We used the sandpaper behind the paper and a

brown paperless crayon that we rubbed using the side onto the paper to make the desert

floor.  This idea was taken from Confessions of a Homeschooler and her USA Study that

you can purchase here.

We also used Confessions of a Homeschooler idea and made snakes by

linking together paper stips.

Here are the next two pages of our state study.

We talked about Navajo and Apache Native Americans using a lot of the materials

found here.  Below are the sheets we used and projects we did.

And we tried our hand at weaving... it was a struggle!!! 

And we played this fun game that was also included.  I did make the die and put a sun

on the number 2 to help the younger children remember to move the sun.

Here are the last two pages of our book.

We talked about the Grand Canyon.  We talked about the Grand Canyon, we

matched pictures of the Grand Canyon, and we waterpainted the Grand Canyon.  You can

find the printable for the Grand Canyon here. 

And here are some of our waterpaintings.

You can also download my other pages here to create your own Arizona unit.

Hope you enjoyed our Arizona Unit.



Fourth Week in June ~Alaska State Study

Our second week of "Trekking Across the US" moved us to the state of Alaska.  We used the idea of flying on US Airlines from Alabama to the state of Alaska.  We talked about the things we saw while leaving Alabama (great review) and then some things we saw as we flew into Alaska.

I am in the process of making a laminated state map with velcro states to put onto it.  I will also be making an airplane to fly to the next state.  Hopefully it will be done by Monday.

We started out coloring the state of Alaska on the cover of our Alaska book.  You can download most of the book at the bottom of this post.

We then found Alaska on a map (I found a map with Alaska in the right place as they need to know where it is) and colored it blue, printed or wrote the state name, did a dot-to-dot of the outline of the state, and discussed and colored the state flag.  Below are pictures of what we did.

You can find the dot-to-dot paper here at Making Learning Fun.

 The older children cursive wrote the name of the state.  We talked about how the seven

little stars form the Big Dipper and the large star is the North Star on the flag.

We then talked about the state bird (Willow Ptarmigan) and state flower (Forget-me-not) and how dog sleds were the way of transportation but how and why snowmobiles have replaced the dog sled.  Below are pictures of the pages in our book and the activities we did.

When we talked about the state bird we put together an eight piece paper puzzle of the bird.  Many

of the younger children struggled a bit with the puzzle.  We then sponge painted a willow ptarmigan and

made a forget-me-not (see below).  Dog sleds was the other topic we covered.  We read the book

I made about dog sleds and then completed a color book (they traced the color word that was dashed

in the color the word was and then they glued the same color of dog print).  The older children did

this activity in cursive and rewrote the word on their own.

 Inuits and Inukshuk were the next two pages in our Alaska book.  Below are the activities we did.

 We talked about the Inuits and what is an igloo.  We made our own igloos cutting strips of

white paper into blocks and gluing them onto the igloo.

 We found out what an Inukshuk is and matched shadows of Inukshuks that you can find here and 

then we made our own Inukshuks that you can find here.

And we made our own Inuits.

Our next two pages covered Mt. McKinley and the Northern Lights.  Below are the activities we did.

 We talked about Mt. McKinley, matched some pictures of Mt. McKinley in our book, and

we drew our own Mt. McKinley.

The Northern Lights were a hit.  They loved looking at pictures of the Northern Lights and

then we chalked (wet the tip of the chalk in water and then draw on the paper... the colors

turn out wonderfully) our own Northern Lights.

Our last two pages were about Polar Bears and a review of what we learned.  Below are the activities.

 We talked about Polar Bears and did a tanogram bear (I just cut out paper pieces and had the

children glue them down) from here.

 I made a counting book in which they counted the number of polar bears and then colored the

right number with a yellow marker.

 My children love this activity... so I thought it would make a good review game... so they rolled and

graphed some of the things we learned about while studying Alaska.

Lastly, we drew and wrote (younger children dictated their response) of their favorite part of

Alaska.

I thought it was a fun week learning about Alaska.  They all enjoyed the activities and learned a few things.  Hope you enjoyed our unit too!  You can download most of my unit here.