Expedition Earth: United States of America

Hello and welcome to our Expedition Earth week on the United States of America! My daughter told me at the start of this lesson, mom, we live here, we don’t need to study it!

Here are some more of the fun things we learned about on our expedition this week:

• Recited the Pledge of Allegiance (we do this daily anyway)
• Sang the USA National Anthem
• Located the USA and Washington D.C. on the world map
• Learned about the US Flag
• American Flag Graham Cracker Snacks: (recipe below)
• Learn about the Statue of Liberty
• Sang an American Classic Song
• Living World Encyclopedia: Rivers and lakes
• Learn about Mount Rushmore
• See Old Faithful Geyser, Yellowstone National Park
• Geography from A-Z Butte, Canyon, Geyser, Rapids, Gulch
• Learn more about the United States of America from National Geographic Kids
• Learned about US animals and classified them on our wall
• Animals from US mini-book
• Learned about the Washington Monument
• Learned about the Navajo People
• Made a Navajo Sand Painting craft

We review oceans and continents then the countries we’ve learned randomly through out the week as well.

Here is our animal wall, it’s getting so full, I think we may have to re-organize soon…ugh! Cool to see all the animals we’ve learned so far though!

We learned about the US flag, and I’m please to say that my children know what each element of the flag stands for. Unfortunately, despite my repeatedly telling them, they still can’t get why it’s not allowed to touch the ground.

Here are our completed US lapbook components. We’ll eventually add these to a world wide lapbook.

We worked on our mapping worksheets, and apparently decided putting star stickers all over our face would make it look like the US flag.

Here’s our USA whiteboard, we review these facts each day and sing our USA song for fun!

As we were enjoying this yummy snack, my daughter asked me “mom, do people from the US really eat flag snacks?” I said “well, you live in the US and you’re eating one, so I guess so!”

USA Flag Snacks: Ingredients: Graham crackers, 8oz cream cheese block, 8oz marshmallow cream. 1 C blueberries, 1 C strawberries, julienned. Directions: Mix cream cheese and marshmallow cream until smooth. Spread onto graham cracker, use blueberries for stars then add strawberries for stripes.

Next we made Navajo sand paintings. This was super fun, and super messy! I suggest doing this one on your plastic trays or cookie sheets to contain some of the sand! Also, prepare the base coat of sand the night before so it has time to dry, I forgot to do this so we had to postpone our craft until the following day!

Thanks for joining us on our expedition through the United States of America, we’re on to Mexico next week!

Click here to learn more about the Expedition Earth Geography curriculum!