Teaching with Ticia: New York and North Carolina

NEW YORK

I have to admit I'm a sucker for New York City because I visited there as a young girl and very much enjoyed seeing Ellis Island and seeing my first Broadway Musical. So, I really enjoyed looking for some fun ideas for it.
 

What's in the lapbook, as you can see it took a few pages to glue it into.

Norman Rockwell is from New York, and this was a fun writing activity.  Write a story about the picture you got.  I did a google search for the images and got more than I could use.

My Ideal Park- Teddy Roosevelt is from New York, my library did not have a good book about him, but it had a truly delightful book about his daughter with wonderful illustrations, and fabulous vocabulary. If you can find a copy of "What to Do about Alice?"  I'd highly recommend it.  Afterward we discussed Teddy Roosevelt founding the National Park system, and designed our ideal park (link to printable).

Under New York- This is a charming story about what there is under the city and the many layers.  It was a great way to think about what is going on that you can't see.  Inside the Under New York printable they drew what was going on under NYC.

Tenth Avenue Cowboy- A boy moves to NYC and dreams of growing up to be a cowboy, his dream comes true but not the way he planned.  This was a great way to talk about dreams coming true in ways that aren't expected.

Statue of Liberty- I found a list of how tall different parts of the statue's body were.  We went outside and measured it out.  In my experience you can tell a kid how big something is, but until they've actually seen it measured out in real life they don't understand it.

Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt flapbooks- for these I used a picture I'd googled and had them write one sentence about each of the presidents.  As I mentioned my library did not have any great books about either Roosevelt or their wives.

Building Manhattan- I used a photocopy of the final page of the book to create a timeline of what happened.

New York State Symbols

NORTH CAROLINA


Back when I was in junior high I had to do a state study about North Carolina.  I thought I was oh so clever and called it "Have you ever heard of the Tar Heel state?"  My history teacher was not as amused and my grade was rather bland, probably a low B.

North Carolina is rather printable light.........  That's being kind.  The books for the state straggled in over the course of 2 months and I just was not able to cover them all.

Design your own plane- Obviously a very popular idea.  Afterwards they really enjoyed flying them outside.

Best way to waterproof paper- North Carolina is known for exporting tar (hence the name Tar Heel state), so we enjoyed trying different ways of waterproofing paper.

North Carolina state symbols-I continued to be amused at what states pick for the state animals, surprisingly enough squirrel is not too common.

OTHER ACTIVITIES not in the book

Greensboro sit ins- my kids really enjoyed designing protest signs.  I did not enjoy as much their deciding to protest later while circling and yelling loudly.

Blackbeard's Last Fight- Several states claim him, and since he plundered up and down the Southern United States it is valid, but he died in North Carolina, and so I put him here.  The kids very much enjoyed making a puppet of him sinking.


I know there is a lot more I could do for New York, but we had spent three weeks on it, and I could tell the kids were getting antsy about it.   For those of you who have visited there or live there what is your favorite thing in New York?

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