Note: I am still catching up on posts after a horrible few weeks filled with sickness, so my Colorado post is just now coming out. If you are looking for my Connecticut post, please stop back by tomorrow to read it... until then, please check out our post below on Colorado.
Here's how we made Colorado hands-on, while we learned...
Skiing:
***NOTE: The week we studied Colorado was one of the weeks that the cold hit our house pretty hard, so I we really didn't get to talk a lot about Colorado. However, thanks to Get Down and Get Your Hands Dirty, she shared with me some AWESOME ideas for talking about the Rocky Mountains and skiing. Unfortunately, I just didn't have the energy or motivation to research anything more than skiing this week. :-(
Since I have never been skiing, this state was just as educational for me. We studied the symbols for skiing: green circle for easy, blue square for medium, black diamond for difficult, and double black diamond for extremely difficult.
Roll a skiing route
I printed this map of a Colorado ski resort, as it was one of the few maps that I found that had its trails labeled the same colors as the skiing symbols. Then I printed a plain die and drew the skiing symbols on the die (green die, blue square, black diamond). Upon rolling the dice, he would "ride" the red line/ski lift to the top of the mountain, and then using the ski symbol determined by the die, he would choose a route of that color to travel down.
Draw a skier
I also created a set of cards from the Olympic pictograms for skiing. We then talked about the different skiing events in the Olympics, and how all of these events were unique. Then, I let him choose a card, and he would draw the image. You can download these cards here.
General ideas for Colorado:
Quarter rubbings/quarter hunt: (download here)
Originally, Aikman was very interested in doing quarter rubbings, but no so much anymore. So, instead I am printing off the quarter sheet, and then having him hunt through the quarters to find the one with Colorado on it. This has been much more of a hit, and he's actually went back to find it a couple of times... and while we're at the store, he wants to look at the quarters that we get back for change to see what state is on their backs.
Label the state with its abbreviation.
This is the FIRST activity my son chooses each week, as soon as it is set out! You can download the page from makinglearningfun here.
Major cities in Colorado (download from here)
This is becoming a personal favorite that is repeated several times over the week. Aikman places stars on the major cities in Colorado. Then he writes the capital city at the bottom of the page. Eventually, I plan on adding more city names, but for now, I don't want him to lose interest in this work by having too many cities to label.
Trace the state
This idea actually came from a request from Aikman. He asked if he could trace the state. I didn't have any tracing paper, but I did find some leftover tissue paper from my wedding invitations nearly 8 years ago. This turned out to be a wonderful substitute for tracing paper. We used the printout from the major cities activity mentioned above, taped down the tissue paper on top, and then he went to work tracing it!
Count the surrounding states
We look at the map, find the state, and then count the states that surround it. Colorado was a difficult one to count the surrounding states, because Arizona doesn't count as a bordering state. (Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah form the "Four Corners", which is classified as the heart of the southwest.) However, this lead to a great discussion of what actually constitutes a "border."
I have also created a simple printable for graphing the number of bordering states. You can download it here.
Make the state flag
One of our highlights each week is creating the flag. I was surprised how easy it was to create this flag, as I was really worried on how to create the C in the center of the flag.
How it was set up:
- 4 sheets of construction paper -- blue, white, yellow, red
- the white paper has a line drawn across it that measures approx. 1/3 of the width
- the yellow paper has a small circle drawn
- the red paper has a medium circle drawn, with a "slice of pie" shape to be cut out
- control picture of the flag
What he did:
1. Cut out white strip, yellow circle, and red circle. Cut out pie shape out of red circle.
2. Using control card, glue all items as they appear in the picture.
***Note, the word Colorado is NOT on the state flag, but my son felt it was important that it should be written on it.
Other ideas I don't have pictures of for this week:
- Pinpushing (map found here)
- Pinpushing (map found here)
- AWESOME worksheets and 3 part cards from Musings of Me -- if you haven't checked out her out yet, make sure you do... she has some great 3 part cards and some fun activities that aren't pictured here.
Oh, and don't forget to be singing the 50 Nifty US states song, found here on youtube! It is helping us remember the states names, in order.
Oh, and don't forget to be singing the 50 Nifty US states song, found here on youtube! It is helping us remember the states names, in order.
Don't forget to venture over to Musings of Me and Get Down and Get Your Hands Dirty to see what they did for Colorado too!
I'm linking up to Children Grow, Children Explore, Children Learn for their Geography/History meme.
4 comments:
We're in the middle of studying Colorado, too. I love your skiing activities!
Cool! Get it? Pun intended. : )
Chuck made some Romper Room "romper stomper" style skis for me this year. I was going to make them out of cardboard, but then he made them out of wood. You could do cardboard though if Aikman would like that. Here's the link so you can see the pictures:http://mybloglittleacorns.blogspot.com/2011/01/romper-stomper-skis.html
Just wanted to let you know that we enjoy your Trekking Across the US series. It works really well with my daughters. We have stayed on Alabama a little longer in that we studied Helen Keller a little more and read some books about her. This week we will be traveling to Alaska!
I'm so loving what you guys are doing for these series. We're also doing geography, but going through in order they entered the union. So, I'm saving up ideas for later on.
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