This is an outline of our State Studies Unit 1 :: Week 1 New England States. It is the first week of a 9 week homeschool unit. I will be adding more notes and journal pages as we go along. I will also be writing a post to give you a more detailed idea of what our weekly schedule looks like. For those of you who have completed our Seasonal Curriculum guides, this will feel very familiar to you. I hope you enjoy it!

Read about:
Maine, ME, Augusta
New Hampshire, NH, Concord
Vermont, VT, Montpelier
in Our Fifty States and The United States of America.

Map: Add the 3 new states to your United States Study Map. We color New England States light blue. They are colored coded on the quizzes. Number the states on the map to coincide with your state list (it gets too hard to fit all the state names directly on the map).

Color: Dover Coloring book page or State Information Page (coming soon) for each state. We like to add a couple of extra notes about the state in the margins. These are things that we learned about in our readings. Again we color New England States light blue.

Community Enrichment Book: Abbie Against the Storm

Community Life Book: Life in a Fishing Community pages 1-11

Activity Page: I have made these for the first few weeks of the unit but I’m not sure if I will continue them making. Let me know if you like them. I’ve used these to go along with the Community Enrichment Books. This week it is about lighthouses.

Read Aloud: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankeweiler chapters 1-3

Student Reader (3-4 grade): Windcatcher chapters 1-7

Narration: Complete a narration on either Abbie Against the Storm or your student’s daily reading from Windcatcher. You can use the Reading Journal or any of the other free Journal Page that you would like. If you need help with learning how to incorporate narrations into your studies, I recommend the book The Complete Writer: Writing With Ease. The Reading Journal includes space for your student to choose several words from his reading that were unfamiliar to him to use as vocabulary words.

Copywork: Use sentences from Abbie Against the Storm or the Mixed-Up Files for copywork.

Art Project: Mixed Media Sailboat Painting

Cooking: Make the recipe from The United States Cookbook: Banana Berry Pancakes with Real Maple Syrup pages 31-33 (Note: We did not have the cookbook yet and made blueberries pancakes to honor both Vermont and Maine for our first week.)

Picture Study: Choose 1 image from Come Look With Me: Art in Early America to study this week.

Poem for Memorization: You will have four weeks to memorize “The Sandpiper” by Witter Bynner. Try to learn one stanza per week.

State Quarters: Another fun activity to add to this unit is collecting Quarters from all 50 states. You can display them in a quarter map.

Quiz: Study the 3 states and capitals you have learned throughout the week. Your student should be able to identify each state on the map, along with its capital and postal abbreviation. You can use your map or flashcards to study.
Week 1 Map Quiz

The Sandpiper
by Witter Bynner

Along the sea-edge, like a gnome
Or rolling pebble in the foam,
As though he timed the ocean’s throbbing,
Runs a piper, bobbing, bobbing.

Now he stiffens, now he wilts,
Like a little boy on stilts!
Creatures burrow, insects hide,
When they see the piper glide.

You would think him out of joint,
Till his bill began to point.
You would doubt if he could fly,
Till his straightness arrows by.

You would take him for a clown,
Till he peeps and flutters down,
Vigilant among the grasses,
Where a fledgling bobs and passes.

 

 

If you are following along with us and completing the State Studies activities at home we would love to hear about your adventures. You can leave a comment here with a link to your blog. If you don’t have a blog or just want to share more photos we would like invite you to join our Wee Folk Art Homeschool Flickr group. Have fun!