50 States Lessons

This year Claire is in the 3rd grade.  At our house that mean she gets to study the 50 states.  I made up my own curriculum when Nathan was in 3rd grade.  Basically, I made up a fill in the blank sheet for each state.  She fills in the name of the state, which number it was to enter the union, its captial, state bird, flower, etc.  Claire likes flags so I printed out a sheet of state flags and she glues the appropriate one at the bottom of the page.  The second page she does is a map of the state.  She writes something she learned about that state on it and she cuts out and glues on little icons of things that state produces.  (I made these up in word back when Nathan was that age)  We get the information from a book on the 50 states that we have.  I'm sure you could find this info in lots of books and websites.  We have a fandex too that works well.

The other thing we do that makes this class a favorite is that we make a food for each state.  It could be a cultural food, an historic food, or just a dish using foods that are produced there.

We study the states in the order that they came into the union.  She has a blank map and she colors them as we study them so she can see how our nation grew.  We just studied our 3rd one today.

Here is a little summary of what we've done so far.

1. Delaware:  Delaware produces a lot of chicken and poultry so we made Garlic Chicken Fried Chicken.  Here is the link to the recipe we used:  http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/garlic-chicken-fried-chicken/detail.aspx  You could also do a crab recipe, but my kids don't care for it so I only make them eat it when we study Maryland. :)

I don't usually use a recipe when I'm making dinner like that so its a challenge to me to find a recipe and follow it!

2.  Pennsylvania:  This usually ends up being one of our favorite states to study because we make Pennsylvania Dutch recipes.  We made Corn Fritters and Funnel Cakes...



 Corn Fritters 

(you are suppose to pan fry them in a little oil and they'll turn out flat. 

I deep fried them so they are puffy.  They were really good though!)

Funnel Cake

3.  New Jersey:  New Jersey produces a lot of fruit and vegetables, one of which is cranberries so we made cranberry oatmeal cookies.  Here is a link to that recipe:  http://www.state.nj.us/jerseyfresh/recipes/njcrancookie.htm

4.  Georgia:  We will study this state on Thursday and make Peach Tea.  Now, you could probably find hundreds of kid-friendly peanut and peanutbutter recipes online to do for this state, but my daughter has a peanut allergy so we stick with the peaches!

Here is that recipe:  1 can peach nectar

                                1/2 c. sugar

                                1 qt. brewed iced tea

                                1/8 c. lemon juice

                           Stir all together and serve.

I'll try to do a post every couple of weeks on the states we are covering.  Claire is also collecting postcards for each state so if you'd like to help her out with that just see the link in my sidebar.