USA Studies

Doing a study on America has been the least exciting.  That's pretty sad, because all my resources are right here!  Maybe I am losing some steam.  I wanted to do it at the beginning of this year so I would be more motivated to do something (as opposed to towards Spring when I am really getting tired!).  And maybe it was because I had birthday party on my mind.  I don't know.  But I do know we will be able to do a whole lot more, especially if we decide to do Cantering the Country geography curriculum in the next few years!

Here's what we did basically for the month of January...

We started off by building the Melissa and Doug USA map puzzle Nana gave us.  I love their puzzles!





We requested info on states that they were interested in.  Those included Florida, Texas, Washington, and Arkansas.  We looked over several maps that came with those packages.  They were, of course, very interested in where Chad and I lived in Texas and where they were born in Arkansas.  I was able to show them the places we have been and the places that we will go as a family some day!

We read books about the Liberty Bell, the Statue of Liberty and Mt Rushmore.  The boys thought their Playdoh sculpture was hilarious!

We colored USA flags and watched a video on Old Glory.



For dinner one night Andrew chewed his toast in the shape of the USA.  This is the night we had Sam's favorite...bacon!





Cowboys were a part of our studies, which tied beautifully into our cowboy themed birthday party.  They drew the cutest cowboys I've ever seen using the Usborne I Can Draw People book.





One sweet little book we read was Across America, I Love You.  I choked up several times reading it to them!

Eat Your Way Around the World gave Fried Chicken, corn on the cob and brownies as a meal from the United States.  My boys loved that, of course!  The USA doesn't have a very distinct food culture.  So we did a little study on one of their favorite things to eat...Mac and Cheese.  From Wikipedia, "Its popularity in the United States has been attributed to Thomas Jefferson serving it at a White House dinner in 1802.  It has been popular in the UK since the Victorian era."  Interesting!

Missionary Stories with the Millers is always a favorite read for our GTG studies.  Andrew loves to sit and listen to these.  Both him and Ethan are real interested in listening.  We like to do these as a family at night.  There were three stories based out of the USA.

I purchased the Usborne Stories From Around the World book for Andrew for Christmas.  They enjoyed the story of "The Magic Doll"

We learned about squirrels.  We read a few stories from the library, colored a squirrel, and watched a Discovery Ed video about them. We also got to learn about them at our field trip this past Wednesday to the nature center about 30 min from here.  We took an extended field trip to surprise Mamaw and Papaw that day!





Well, I guess we did more than I thought!