Study America Saturday ~ Iowa and Kansas

When I think of Iowa and Kansas, I do not get excited. However, the kids and I had an exciting trip through both states with our Road Trip USA unit study.

Iowa

We completed our Iowa notebook page and read Iowa: Facts and Symbols by Elaine A. Kule

We learned that the geode is Iowa's state rock. When we were visiting Jacob's Cave in Missouri with our friends this summer as a part of Lake School, we got to watch a geode get cut open. It was neat to see and we received some great information from the lady who worked there.

That led us to the book Rock On!: A Look at Geology's Groovy Gems by Christine Peterson.

We also did the coolest experiment!

We used our new science notebooking skills that we have been doing on our study of colors and rainbows. It was a very exciting and enriching experiment!

Kansas

We completed our notebooking page on Kansas and then moved onto some interesting and fun activities.

Amelia Earhart was born in Kansas. We started by reading the book Vanished! The Mysterious Disappearance of Amelia Earhart by Monica Kulling. It was excellent and told of all of the different theories as to what happened to Ms. Earhart. Makes you wonder!

Then we watched a very short black and white clip about her disappearance from the bonus material of the "Flights of Courage" dvd.

As the sunflower is the state flower of Kansas, we read about it in Sunflowers by John F. Prevost

Then we turned to the queen of pastel tutorials, Tricia at Southern Hodgepodge, and completed her Sunflower pastel tutorial. I thought they turned out really great, and we all enjoyed doing them.

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