Our Tour of the United States

Welcome to Pennsylvania!

We are all loving this unit study! The books are wonderful. The kids really enjoying the mapping and journal keeping that we are doing. Every state is opening more opportunities to learn. As Kyle says I go off into a whole other world. But he likes my tangents! He has enjoyed some great snacks and fun activities off them.

We just finished Pennsylvania last week. We are taking our time and reading extra books that I think the kids will enjoy. As you can see we picked up on the crayons and Hershey bars. We took a Crayola factory tour on line and watched the production of the crayons being made and packaged. We have some other craft projects that we will be doing this week and next to finish up crayons and their history. The kids loved this video and Kyle and Ethan enjoy learning the company history. This particular unit has been great because I have been able to include Erin's preschool activities with the color theme.

Being a state that is rich in history, Kyle enjoyed reading about Gettysburg and the Gettysburg Address. The Liberty Bell was also a big topic and we are all ready to take a trip to Philadelphia and see real life history.

The chocolate I am saving for the month of February. I have so many ideas and books that I am going to devote the entire month to learning the history and process of making chocolate and then specifically learn about the history of Hershey to tie in Pennsylvania. Conveniently, Mars Co. the maker of M & M's is located in New Jersey which is the state we started this week. So that is moving on to the list as well.

American Grub is a book I found that gives a recipe that has significance to each state. For Pennsylvania it was Funnel Cakes, the favorite dessert of the Pennsylvania Dutch colonists. This afternoon we successfully made funnel cakes. Having never made them before I wasn't sure how they would turn out but they were really good. A little more doughy than the fair but still really good and there was not a bit left!

The dough before mixing in the milk.

Paige holding the funnel. Good thing I put cooking spray

on the inside, it was a thick dough.

Cooking....

Done! It worked!

Finishing touch!

Erin gives it a thumbs up.

So does Paige.

We are already deep into New Jersey and working on lots of fun things! There are so many places that we want to go now!