This school year we’ve been doing a Weekly State Study. We have all had so much fun with it, I thought I’d share what we’ve been doing and our favorite resources.
Each week we study a different state. I decided we would study them in the order they became a state, but of course you could study in alphabetical order instead.
On our bulletin board I include the state name, capital and postal abbreviation, a photo outline of the state (Teachers Pay Teachers freebie!), and print-outs of the state flag, and anything else relevant (state bird, tree, etc).
On Monday morning the kids find the state on our USA wall map, then we watch a quick video about the state (usually Homeschool Pop).
Each child then completes a worksheet (I chose this set from Teachers Pay Teachers). We print, cut and paste the flag in the State Flag box and we keep the box to the top right blank until the following week where we paste a photo of that week’s STATE DINNER!
Our weekly state dinners our definitely the kids favorite part. We try to make a state food and dessert each week and then we have fun browsing through these two resources:
I spent a lot of time researching books for this study and found quite a few that looked great, but unfortunately were far from ideal. So many were extremely biased politically! Anyway, these two books have been great and are working well for the ages of my kiddos (K through 7th). “The Awesome 50 States” offers unique facts, highlights state foods, weird roadside attractions and more. Of note, it does feature a “Spooky Spot” and “Horrifying History Site” for most of the states. Depending on the age of your kiddos and how much you want to delve into these you may want to skim over or skip entirely. “America State by State” is a collection of removable placemats to color which is perfect for my Kindergartner. We explore these two resources while we enjoy our State dinner and/or dessert and we research or pull up info and videos for anything that’s highlighted we want to learn more about!
Here are some sites I’ve found helpful when deciding what foods we should try!
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_foods
- https://www.cookingchanneltv.com/recipes/packages/50-state-foods
- https://www.newsweek.com/50-dishes-50-states-look-each-states-official-food-1513526
- https://www.foodnetwork.com/restaurants/packages/best-food-in-america/photos/most-iconic-food-united-states
- https://www.thedailymeal.com/entertain/united-states-food-official-state-foods-slideshow/
- http://sweetstateofmine.blogspot.com
I’ll post each state as we complete it, and what recipes/foods we tried. Eventually I’ll also post a spreadsheet of each menu and a document with all the state flags. I’ve also added a big scratch-off style USA map… the kids love to scratch off each State and it’s corresponding flag as we complete it. First up, Delaware!
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