Hello and welcome to Delaware! It’s the 2nd stop in our Road Trip USA curriculum, the kids loved this state!
Of course we started off by finding Delaware and Dover on our Wall Map.
Some of the things we learned about this week:
- Located Dover, DE on our Wall Map
- Read National Geographic US Atlas and locate Dover, DE using the mapping grid
- Learned about the state flag
- State Fish: Weakfish
- State Bird: Blue Hen Chicken
- State Flower: The Peach Blossom
- Continued reading If You Were There When They Signed the Constitution
- Added on the next verse to our 50 States and Capitals Song
- State Marine Animal: The Horseshoe Crab
- State Wildlife Animal: The Grey Fox
- Learned about the Delaware Amish Community in Dover, DE
- Checked out The Old Statehouse online to see where they ratified the Constitution.
- Checked out Dover Air Force Base
- Learned about the Delaware Memorial Bridge then built our own replica!
- Classified our Delaware state animal symbols and added them to our wall
- Reviewed Connecticut and Delaware, and played a fun game of state jeopardy!
Here’s what I managed to take photos of!
We start off by adding our state flag to our Travel Log:
While I read through the facts, the kids color their worksheets for the state symbols we are learning that day:
Next we added our animals to the Animal Classification Wall:
We played a fun game of jeopardy with our State Jeopardy Cards! I found this Jumbo Magnetic Spinner from Educational Insights and it’s perfect for our state review game! The spinner comes with wipe-off disks you can put in. I added the state and points to the spinner. After that I realized that giving them the state on the spinner basically gave them the answer, so now I just put points on it, and then I pick a random card for them. If they get the answer right, I put their points on our white board. Psst…Stay tuned in for a giveaway of the Jumbo Magnetic Spinner !
If you notice, my daughter is helping to hold the spinner. Our whiteboard is magnetic, but I’m not sure if it’s the weight of the spinner, or our white board, but it doesn’t stay put very well when you spin it, or at least when a 6 year old boy spins it, so we just take turns holding it.
Next we colored in our mini-books for our states and added them to the divider tab for the Northeast region of worksheets:
You can choose to do a USA Lapbook, or just add them to your binder dividers like we are.
And finally, we made our own version of the Delaware Memorial Bridge out of building sticks, play-doh and cardboard. Tutorial to follow!
I purchased this Creative Teaching Press United States Bulletin Board Set a few years back and found it recently! I apologize, I can’t find it to link for you, but maybe you can find something similar if you look around. Each of the states is a separate punch out, and since they’re fairly large, we’ll probably just put up one region at a time.
Since crab is a popular food item in Delaware, we ended out our week with a trip to Joe’s Crab Shack! If you have one in your area, I highly recommend it.
We had some of the best crab ever there! Of course, we don’t live on the coast so, my version of good crab and yours might be slightly different, but still, it was VERY GOOD! ;o)
And that wraps up our Delaware study! If you’d like to come along with us on our Road Trip USA journey, click the image below to learn more!
That looks like an amazing “trip”. The crab legs look awesome and I love the bridge project. I really like this Road Trip curriculum.
We are having a blast with our “Road Trip” curriculum. Just built a lighthouse yesterday for Maine!
This looks like a lot of fun! I am thinking of using this next year with my future 2nd grader and K-5.
Erica I have a few questions
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The board for the animal clasification is it just a paper attached to your wall, or is it a bulletin board covered with paper?
What do you use to adhere your posters and items like the state bulletin board pieces to your wall?
I found some putty at Hobby Lobby made for this but it doesn’t hold well and sometimes peels my wallpaper off!
Hi Jenny,
My animal wall is just colored bulletin board paper on the wall, there’s nothing behind it. I use this tape called Mavslus Tape (think Marvelous with an accent darling) http://www.mavalus.com/. I LOVE that stuff, it doesn’t take off your paint and sticks really well!!! Each year I buy a handfull of rolls to last for the year :o) I also use the tape to stick each animal up.
Erica,
Thanks for letting me know about the Mavslus tape. I will check into that.
Where do you get it?
I get mine from Lakeshore Learning or Beyond the Blackboard. See if you have a local teacher store around and they may have it!
Awesome! I can’t wait until my kids (now 2.5 & 1) are older to start doing geography with them. Being originally from Delaware, you did a great job- the DE Memorial Bridge looks great. Oh and as a true Delawarean, I love crab. Mmmmm. Especially crab cakes! 🙂
If I could add a couple things to your list of ideas one would to research a bit about Old New Castle, including the Courthouse Museum. The second would be the Winterthur Museum. The links to both are here:
http://www.thebrandywine.com/go/historic_new_castle.html
http://www.winterthur.org/
If anyone is in the DE area, those are worth checking out. Thanks for sharing Erica!
Thanks for sharing some additional ideas Amanda! :o)
It’s so fun to read what all your family did for the different states. We just make our suspension bridge today, actually. My daughter still wants to paint the “towers” red.
Here’s a link to pics of our bridge:
http://unsolicitedadvice-n-such.blogspot.com/2011/09/road-trip-usa-delaware.html
Where oh where did you get the awesome map?
How fun! We just visited the state capitol (Sacramento) on Monday for our short road trip, and ate at Joe’s Crab Shack. Now I’m excited to use your curriculum!
Love the Roadtrip curriculum! We were fortunate enough to have a trip to the east coast planned for right after we studied most of the northeast states. One of the highlights of the trip was actually driving over the Deleware Memorial Bridge. It was a great opportunity to see what we had built in our school room and it means so much more to my kids (6, 4, 3, and 2) now… they realize it’s a real thing! Thanks for the curriculum!
I’m planning our RoadTrip for our upcoming school year. When you say you read through the facts as they color the sheet – do you just read them the list from your guide or do you elaborate on each item? What have you found to help them retain the information past the day you learned about it? I’m excited to start this Trip. My kids love geography!