Welcome to Wisconsin!

We just couldn't take one more minute of plain old American History and we've prematurely jumped into our Wisconsin history studies!

Here are the materials we're using:

Wisconsin: Our State, Our Story This is the new 4th grade Wisconsin history textbook. We got it from the library. Luckily, there are 35 copies, so we should be able to keep renewing it/checking it out until we're done.

A Journey Through Learning's My State Lapbook This is the first lapbook I've ever purchased. I looked through a lot of free resources and many other state lapbooks at CurrClick before deciding on this one. Not that this one is the best out there, but it best met OUR needs. The girls have already begun their lapbooks. One thing I really like about this particular kit, and something we discovered AFTER we began putting it together, is that there is plenty of "white space" between the booklets, which means we are able to place them closer than they are mapped out in the instructions and we will then have room to add some of our own booklets (we've already made two maps about Wisconsin's topography and glaciation which we will add.)

Right now we're reading and really enjoying Wisconsin Forest Tales It's historical fiction about the history of Wisconsin forests from Indian times to logging (our favorite story so far!) to the Peshtigo fire (children's fiction on this topic is VERY sparse) to homesteading, Dutch Elm disease to school forests.

Some fun little trivial things we've done

Found and colored Wisconsin on our world map

Drew the line for 90 degrees W longitude and 45 degrees N latitude. Guess where they cross! Wisconsin is right smack in the very center of the Northern/Western hemispheres!!! How cool is that!

We ate two apples, one cut into the northern and southern hemisphers and one cut into the western and eastern hemispheres

We found all the interesting places in Wisconsin like where dad and mom went to college, where Grandma and Grandpa live, what route we take to Grandma and Grandpa's house, where Auntie lives.

Today we were reading that some of the white pines growing in northern Wisconsin in the early 1800s were bigger than the arms of THREE MEN around! We made a circle with our arms, Daisy, Pepper and I and THAT was a pretty big tree!

We explored the "glaciers and glacial features" in our yard (the melting snowbanks

We made moraines and till on the carpet using a sheet of paper (the glacier) and the Bananagram tiles.

We watched the first few parts of Sesquecentennial Wisconsin Stories If you have RealPlayer you can watch this in 6-8 min. segments.