Teaching with Ticia: Ohio and ways to use the state symbols books

I was going to post on Ohio and Louisiana, but there were a lot of activities and books to go with Louisiana, and that would make this post extremely long, beyond my attention span..........

OHIO

First a sign language joke (I took 2 years in college), the sign for Ohio is "O" move your "O" higher.  That may only amuse me, but it certainly amused me very much.

Included in the lapbook:

My Great Invention- Ohio is home to the "Invention Museum," which I would love to visit someday!  I found a book called "Cromwell Dixon's Sky Cycle," all about a boy who loves to invent things.  With my kids we created an invention with Legos, however this would also be a great time to break out your box of recyclables and let them create whatever they want.  This activity lets you pull in several different disciplines (science-making a plan and experimenting, writing, what are your steps and how did you do it, math- measuring).

Covered Wagon- Early on Ohio was considered the "Great Wilderness," and it was brave to explore out there.  We tend to think of wagon trains to Oregon or somewhere "out West," but once upon a time this was great wilderness.  We had to fill our covered wagons with pictures of what we would bring.  I tried to size it appropriate to the space, but that did not always work right.

Neil Armstrong- Neil Armstrong is from Ohio, and the book I found wrote all about how he planned and worked to achieve his plan of being a pilot and then an astronaut.  I challenged the kids to think of what their goal is and how they would achieve it.

Ohio State symbols page

Other things to do:

Trilobites- the state fossil.  Afterwards I did a few google searches and found these ideas: trilobite masks and printable 3d trilobite and snack.  Trilobites are on my things I find oddly amusing list.

Giant of Seville- This is a cute story about a small town, Seville, that helps a VERY tall man feel welcome in their town despite his not fitting any of the houses or buildings.  A great story to talk about accepting people who are different than you, and how to work to help them fit in.  An easy extension of this book is to measure out how tall the giant was and compare it to themselves.

Annie Oakley- my library had several books on her, but it did not work on the flow of our lesson to include her.  I highly recommend reading a book about her and then comparing it to the musical about her "Annie Get Your Gun!"  If you have boys with Nerf guns this would be a great chance to let them practice hitting targets like she did (toilet paper rolls make great targets).


Warm as Wool- You can use this an introduction to spinning wool, I found a great series of videos on this starting with "How a spinning wheel works."

What to do with State Symbol books

Graph them, this is the easiest thing to do with them.  I joke that every third state has a ladybug as their state insect and the other two are either a butterfly or firefly.  But, it makes for an interesting comparison.  What is the most common state insect or flower?

Sort into classifications- Does every state have a state flower or fossil?  Which states have what symbols?

Compare and Contrast- Venn Diagrams would be a great idea here.  You can compare two neighboring states and see if they share any common symbols.

What would you do with them?  I'm planning on graphing them, but I think we might go back and do a Venn diagram as an easy pictorial introduction.

Tweet

Pin It Now!