Study America Saturday ~ U.S.A. Maps

Sorry this is going up so late! Last night my husband and I went on a date. And, today was just an absolutely beautiful day, and I spent it outdoors planting fall flowers, cleaning out my gardens, and doing some fall decorating.

This past week, Brynne studied the state of Kansas. We have more activities to complete next week, so our official Kansas post will be next Saturday.

For "homework" in Eli's public school second grade class, his teacher sends home Literacy Bags for them to work on for a week or two and complete. So far he has had bags on frogs, main ideas, and this week, U.S.A. There are many mapping activities in the bag, so we have really been soaking them all in. Brynne has caught the fever and extended the bag lessons into her regular school day.

Here are the different things she did this week with U.S.A. maps:

Eli and Brynne used a United States laminated map to answer questions.

Eli has a fascination with China and wanted to know where it was located. The other side of the U.S.A. map had a world map. He said, "So you go this way [pointing to the right] to go to China?" I explained to him that the flat map is an "orange peel" of the Globe, and that you would actually go the other direction to get there because it would be closer. Their daddy went to Taiwan a few year ago, so he explained to them how he traveled there. We spent some time looking at the differences between the globe and flat maps.

While picking up some items from Dollar General to send to my grandma in a care package, I saw a U.S. foam puzzle for $1.00. Brynne came home and immediately went to work on that puzzle, completing it several times over the next several days. She used the laminated map from Eli's Literacy Bag for reference.

For her birthday, my mom gave Brynne a 60 piece, 2-sided jigsaw puzzle of the United States. Brynne worked on it on Thursday and completed the entire puzzle herself. While she was doing it she listened to "Fifty Nifty United States" on Youtube over and over.

We read There's a Map on My Lap! by Tish Rabe.

In the process of doing her puzzles, Brynne started reciting The Great Lakes that we learned about a few weeks ago, using the HOMES method. I was so proud of her!

In other map news, Brynne worked on a salt dough map of Kansas. The finished product will be shown next week. He's a sneak peek.

How did you study the U.S.A. this week?