Welcome to Florida, a.k.a. “The Sunshine State”! We had a great time on Road Trip USA and I’m excited to share our activities with you!
You know we start off by locating our state.
What you don’t know is the Teeny Tot has taken it upon herself to take over as “teacher” and make sure that people are finding the states correctly on our map. Notice how serious she is, I know you can’t hear her, but she’s say “And here’s Fowida…”. Then she went on to point out several other states by their color, getting angry at anyone who tried to correct her. Yikes.
Here are some of the things we learned about this week:
- Located Florida and Tallahassee on our wall map
- Read our National Geographic Atlas and located Tallahassee, FL using the map coordinates.
- Worked on our 50 States and Capitals song
- Learned about the state bird: Mockingbird
- Learned about the state reptile: The American Alligator
- Learned about the state flower: The orange blossom
- Learned about Kennedy Space Center
- Made a space shuttle craft
- Checked out Walt Disney World, Busch Gardens, Sea World, Universal Studios and Florida Islands of Adventure
- Food: Citrus fruit, had oranges for snack, and tried some Key Lime pie for dessert!
- Classified the animals of Florida
- Added our flag stamp to our Travel Log
- Read: If You Traveled on the Underground Railroad by Ellen Levine
We started off by reading some of our Florida state facts and working on our coloring page.
Here’s my white board for Florida. Each week I put up the main facts for each state so we can review them quickly before each lesson.
Awhile back I signed up for the Highlights Book Club: Which Way USA. Each month they send us a couple states. They are fun map folded like brochures, and a magazine with activities for each state. They’re actually really fun, and the kids have loved looking through them! Below you can see the map side:
And here is the opposite side, it has fun facts for each state.
Of course we added our state animals to our Animal Classification wall.
We also put up our state on our bulletin wall. It’s a quick way to review our states and capitals.
We also add our state to the Trend USA Wall Poster
We always add our flag to our Travel Log at the end of each state to signify that we’ve visited and learned about it!
One of our favorite activities is using the map coordinates to locate the state capital. I’m not sure why this is a hit, but everyone has to have a chance or there’s trouble!
We finished off our study by learning about Kennedy Space Center, and making a fun rocket craft.
Then Turbo went up to his room and came out about 30 minutes later with a Kennedy Space Center Replica:
Then he took it apart to show me there was a little guy in the rocket ship. I love Legos.
And that wraps up our Florida study! If you’d like to come along with us on our Road Trip USA journey, click the image below to learn more!
Question for you…when you’re covering things like geography and end up teaching it to everyone, do you find the need to teach it again to the younger kids when they get a bit older or does teaching it the one time work?
Hi Melissa, I will probably have to cover geography again with Tinkerbell. She is doing well in the study and learned a LOT from last year’s Expedition Earth studies, but since she’s so young I’ll go over it again with her and Teeny Tot once she’s older.
Do you teach everything about the one state you are on all in one day? I am trying to figure out how to fit Road Trip USA into our schedule. Thanks!
No, I usually break it up into two days, sometimes we’ll only do 1 state per week. I planned to do 2 states per week, but we don’t always have the time to get it all done!
Also some states are quicker than others, so I’m just trying to be a good homeschool mom and be flexible :o) LOL! But typically we do 2 days per state.
LOVE it!!!! You are so creative! 🙂 I am interested in using this program. My son is 6. We are currently working at a mostly Kindergarten level. Is this a geography unit study, or more of a all in one unit study (since you have an animal classification chart and such, seems like you are covering other subjects too). Thanks! 🙂
Just an FYI… Which Way USA from Highlights is available to home educators at a discount. Instead of joining “the club”, and receiving two sets each month, there is a form you can request and order the states you need (book and map, just book, or just map). I just ordered them all at once to use with our study so that I had them when we came to that state.