This is an outline of our State Studies Unit 1 :: Week 2 New England States. It is the second week of a 9 week homeschool unit. Read the State Studies Unit Overview to learn more about the program and catch up on past weeks.
Public Domain Image
Read about:
Massachusetts, MA, Boston
Rhode Island, RI, Providence
Connecticut, CT, Hartford
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: Going Lobstering
Community Life Book: Life in a Fishing Community pages 12-23
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 lobster buoys.
Read Aloud: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankeweiler chapters 4-6
Student Reader (3-4 grade): Windcatcher chapters 8-15
Narration: Complete a narration on either Going Lobstering 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 Going Lobstering or the Mixed-Up Files for copywork.
Art Project: Painting Cork Buoys
Cooking: Make the recipe from The United States Cookbook: Boston Baked Beans
Picture Study: Choose 1 image from Come Look With Me: Art in Early America to study this week (we choose Capture of H.R.M. Frigate).
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 2 Map Quiz
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!
Photos MB 2/28-14-3/10-14
My seven year old and I are enjoying the lessons so much. Thank you for all your creative and hard work! My child attends a Waldorf charter school and has been fascinated with maps and globes since she was a toddler. So great to have this fun curriculum to add to her learning. BTW she loves the activity page, hope you choose to continue with that section. Thanks again, we really appreciate and enjoy your blog/website/curriculum!
I'm glad that you are enjoying the unit. I will give more thought to the activity pages. It is nice to hear which pieces work for different families since I'm sure everyone uses the resources in different ways.
Having a great time using the ideas you have provided! The activity page is a great starting point and we have used the light house and lobster bouys to paint, draw and compare to the light houses and fishing bouys we have here in Alaska. They are a fun way to do “research”! 🙂