Hi! It's been a long time since I've stopped by to chat. Over a year, in fact, because that's how old the babe is now!
Anyway, our other two children (dd 9, ds 7) are studying the US. They know the names of all the states but don't know where they are or much about them. We decided to do a project loosely based on the book "Flat Stanley" by Jeff Brown (I think). (I got this idea from someone else but don't remember who.)
We have created a pair of paper dolls aptly named Flat Rachel and Flat Joshua for our children. We mail them off to people in other states and ask them take the "kids" on an imaginary tour around their state; then send them back with notes of their journey and, maybe, a few inexpensive souvenirs (ie postcards, pictures, etc -- nice but NOT required). Some specific questions that the children came up with were: What kind of animals live in your area? What is the weather like -- how hot/how cold does it get? Was there anything of historic importance that happened there? What is the plant life like? As the answers come in. We get out our Atlas and each child's copy of a US map. We look up the city/town in the atlas and mark it, with the person's name, onto their US maps. Then we make a separate notebook with the letters and postcards. The only problem is that we do not know people in every state. So far we have AZ, FL, MN, VA, IL, MA, NC, NY, MD and we live in PA. If you would be interested in participating in our project, could you please email your address to dmellott1@superpa.net and we will send you our "children"!
Depending on the response, we might not get a chance to involve everyone but thank you so much for your help! Orchard Girl and family