Trekking Across the US ~Connecticut...Part 1

We started Connecticut this week... but we didn't finish!  So this is part one of our Connecticut study and I will post more once we finish.  I also added links to our Colorado unit for those looking for our book and other printables to go along with the unit.

Next week is our last week of summer vacation... my children along with my school-aged daycare children will be headed off to school on Wednesday.  So next week will be our last week that we will be studying a state on a weekly basis.  I will continue but I have choosen to do our regular preschool curriculum and compliment each month with one state study.  It will probably fall the last week of each month. 

So here goes the beginning of our Connecticut unit.  You can download part 1 of my book here.
Here is a picture of the cover.

As always we talked about the state, traced the name of the state, and colored

the state.

Our next two pages looked like this.

We found the state of Connecticut on the US map and colored it pink, we pieced

together the eight counties of Connecticut to form the state (my younger ones needed

a lot of support on this one), we talked about and colored the state flag, and we

traced/printed the state name.  Below you will find close-ups of these pages.

Here are the next two pages.

We talked about the state bird and insect on these two pages.  Since we spent a lot of time

learning about the Robin in the spring I opted not to do another robin craft.  Instead we spent

a lot of time on the praying mantis in which the children found this insect very interesting. 

Below you can see close-ups of these two pages.

We then made a really cute craft of the praying mantis.  The directions and

printable can be found here.  We fingerpainted the printable and then cut

them out and put them together the next day.  The boys were really intrigued by this

craft!

The two pages looked like this.

On these two pages we talked about the state song and the state mammal.  We sang the

song "Yankee Doodle" and talked about the song.  We then colored the dandy below.  And

we talked about the sperm whale and tried drawing our own.  Below are close-ups of these

two pages and other activities we did.

 Below we made Yankee Doodle hats (newspaper hats) using the directions found here.

We used butcher's paper instead and it worked out great for decorating.

 And we played this Yankee Doodle game in which the children rode horses

(croquet mallets... we had to be creative and use our imaginations) and threw

bean bags at a hanging bell.  Each time they rang the bell they received two

points.  They were very entertained by this activity (like more than 20 mins.)

and didn't want to keep score... just throw those bean bags.  It actually was quite

challanging to ring the bell so they adapted and found ways to get the bean bag

to ring the bell.  We found the game here.

And lastly after talking about the sperm whale we made one.  We used the directions

from here.

That concludes part one of our Connecticut study.  Hope you enjoyed what we did.