Trekking across The States - California

This week we headed off to California (I wish it was in real life!!). There is so much to learn about this vast state! We fit in what we could but there are so many other things we could have done. Don't forget to get some other great ideas from Montessori Tidbits and Get Down and Get Your Hands Dirty.

We completed our cut, color and paste page with a few facts about California. Just noticed a typo on this page.....it's fixed in the download!

After looking at some pictures of giant Redwoods, I made some for Channing to measure with unifix cubes. He then filled out the "How does it measure up" page.

Aren't Golden Poppies beautiful?! We made one using coffee filters, a pipe cleaner and some yellow foam. You can find a link here which will show you how to make red poppies. We pretty much made ours the same way but added the yellow foam inside instead of the black pom pom.

Here is a great poem by Paul Perro about the California Goldrush. I read it a number of times to Channing during the week. I love that it tells the story in such a kid friendly way! If Channing was a little older, I would have done some more study on what it was like trying to find gold.....maybe in a few years.
We painted a coloring page of someone panning for gold.

We also learned a little about the Golden Gate bridge. We made this picture and stuck our little fact book about the bridge at the top. I had high hopes of using toothpicks but it didn't really work out (maybe with older kids?). We found some great info from this site.

Who can learn about California without learning a few things about the beach! We did a land and sea animal sort. I didn't want to do too many beachy things as I want to do a beach unit later in the year and will do LOTS more activities then.

We also read "A house for Hermit Crab" by Eric Carle and then made these adorable fact books about hermit crabs. You'll find the shell and the facts on the download but there is no pattern for the body of the hermit crab, I just free handed it on scrapbook paper. Trust me, I can't draw at all so if I can make one up, you can too :-)

Apparently Caesar Salad was first made by an Italian Restaurant named Caesar Cardini in Tijuana, Mexico in 1924. Hollywood stars travelling there fell in love with it and brought it back to LA with them. It became very popular there and eventually it' popularity spread across the States. It's one of my favorites too.

We made some on Friday night with pizza for the boys and then did this simple sequencing activity.

Some other things we did but I didn't get photos of:

California quarter rubbing

PowerPoint from the members section on 1+1+1=1

Looked at shells and played with them in a little tub with water and sand.

Used the same sand bucket, got some rocks from the yard (gold) put them in the sand and used a sieve to try to find it.

Read LOTS of books.

The cute graphics you see in the "Trekking" button are from Scrappin Doodles. Thank you Denyse for allowing us to use them!

I am going to link this to: