Week 17 (Adventures Week 14): Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland and South Carolina

This week we talked about four new states: Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland and South Carolina. We had a great week, but I’ll be honest, I wish we weren’t doing so many states at a time, I would love to slow it down a little bit and take just a little bit more time with each state.

We followed a very similar process to the one I explained in my post last week. In addition, Treyton asked to complete his Melissa and Doug United States Floor Puzzle.

We read portions of our weekly books for each state and then did our state passports, state pages and state coloring pages.

I try to find a fun activity to go with each state, to help remember it, but we only did two activities (Massachusetts and South Carolina) this week.

Connecticut

We were supposed to make robin nests on this day but we didn’t have the supplies, so we read a robin book instead.

Massachusetts

We learned from reading “The Boy on Fairfield Street” that Dr. Seuss was originally from Massachusetts. We love Dr. Seuss around here, so we pulled out our Dr. Seuss hat, and played around with that for a while.

Next, we decided to pick one Dr. Seuss book to read. Treyton decided on “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish” before reading the book I talked to the kids about what antonyms are, I simplified it to Lexa asking her to try and find two opposites to remember in the story. Since then, Treyton has been so proud, telling me all the time the opposites that he finds. He forgets the word “antonym”, an calls it “animan”, but at least he’s trying.

After we read all about Dr. Seuss and some of his work, I had Treyton use his imagination to create his own animal. He made a chicken with horns, and names him zak, we made a list of rhyming words and used them to describe him.

Because we loved having our Boston Tea Party so much a few weeks ago, I had the idea of reading our Dr. Seuss stories during “tea” time to celebrate both aspects of Massachusetts. The kids LOVED this idea!! 

Maryland

Due to our schedule on this day, we simply completed our state pages for this state.

 

South Carolina

We learned that South Carolina had a problem with pirates for several years in the 1700s. So I found a few fun pirate ideas.

I found this printable patch and pirate hat which Treyton look adorable wearing!! 

Next, we made this free pirate glyph from Mrs. M’s blog. These were such fun additions to school this week, it was hard not too get carried away with the idea of doing an entire pirate unit! (I’m still not totally over the idea…. but we’ll see)

    

Chapter Book Reading

Treyton’s doing pretty well with his reading, and continues to make his way through the Magic Tree House book. I’m not sure if we will continue on with chapter books or not, as I can see his confidence waning a bit.

AWANA Car

For AWANA this week they had drive-in movie night. The kids were supposed to build their own cardboard box car to watch the movie in.

Daddy helped Treyton build the frame. Treyton decorated it. And mom had the idea to add headlights, which Dad engineered.

Treyton was kind enough to let his little sisters take a spin too!

Farmer Boy – Milk and Popcorn        

We’re reading the book Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder. We did the milk and popcorn experiment that Almanzo did as a kid. If you take a cup of milk and an equal cup of popcorn, you can put the popcorn in the milk without it overflowing out of the container. (Our’s look like it overflowed, because we purposely overflowed it with rocks before we started to show that normally the milk would overflow).   

We had a fun week of school, and are really enjoying our state studies. We will be doing some fun Thanksgiving activities next week, but then we will be taking about 3 weeks off of school, so you won’t be seeing as much from us for a while.

We hope you have Happy Holidays!!