This post is one in a series about our “travels” through the regions of the United States! The beginning of the year was dedicated to the northeast, which you can read all about HERE. This post is all about the midwest region, which we had a blast with!
If you have read my previous post about the northeast, you know we have a large, oversized US map mounted to foam board that we use to label the states, landforms, and some landmarks that we learn about. This has been a great addition to our unit, as it is kept displayed every day and it is easy to see where we have “been”. We added some texture to our map for the midwest, since we learned about the Corn Belt, Wheat Belt, and the Dairy Belt. We also learned about the Mississippi River by watching this video, viewing it in our atlas, and labeling it on our map. Here is our current map with the midwest included:
We also filled in our midwest region lap book as we went. You can read more about these lap books in my Northeast post, but they were created by Jill Russ (with some tweaks by me) and you can find them HERE.
In addition to the midwest region lap book, we also read through the midwest region paired passage as we reached each subject. It is well written and covers so much. These are also made by Jill Russ, the same creator of the lap book.
And we ALWAYS watch Homeschool Pop’s videos for each state that we “travel” to!
So now to break it up into some specifics that we covered:
GRASSLANDS
We first talked about the grasslands biome and reviewed it by watching this video. We learned about how much of the midwest region is covered in grasslands, so we covered our large map with literal grass (see pic above)!
MICHIGAN
MODEL T
We learned about the Model T and Henry Ford by tying it into our reading unit. We first watched this introductory video and then read the book Along Came the Model T: How Henry Ford Put the World on Wheels. This book is quite old and I had to buy it second hand to find it, but it gave us some good information.
We viewed this timeline that walks through how Ford came to be and where it is today as a company. We watched this video about how assembly lines changed the industrial world and then we HAD to watch the I Love Lucy episode about the candy factory. Y’all know the one…where Lucy and Ethel go to work in a candy factory and get placed at the assembly line. They can’t keep up with the speed which results in them stuffing the candies in their shirts, hats, and mouths! Whenever I taught economics in the classroom, we ALWAYS watched this clip. I would show this and the kids always thought it would be so boring since it wasn’t in color, but by the end, they were ALL cracking up!! My son was laughing SO hard and begged to watch more!
The real exciting thing is that we actually got to see a Model T in person! We live near the Shenandoah Mountains, so we took a quick weekend trip to Luray, VA to visit the caverns there. In the same complex, they have an automobile museum which had a Model T! I love when these education stars align to create memorable learning experiences!
MOTOWN
While learning about Michigan we also learned about Motown music! We read about Motown music in the paired passage that we use for this entire unit, as it had a section on it. We then listened to a variety of songs, which was fun because I used to listen to them in the car with my mom all the time. I was totally jamming out and singing my heart out!
WISCONSIN/DAIRY BELT
One of our main focuses with the midwest region was learning about the three “belts”, and Wisconsin seemed the best choice to talk about the dairy belt! To begin, we read the book Clarabelle: Making Milk and So Much More, which explains what life is like for a dairy cow. We also read the portion of our paired passage for this region that covered the dairy belt.
We then got to visit a real dairy farm not terribly far from our home! South Mountain Creamery in Maryland has a great farm to visit, and they even allow you to feed a calf! It was such a cool experience! My son was so surprised at how strong the calves were!
To add some fun to our large map, we added a cow print to the state of Wisconsin (you can see it in the first pic of our map above)!
KANSAS/NEBRASKA
WHEAT BELT
For the wheat belt, we “traveled” to Kansas and Nebraska. We read our paired passage, watched a few videos about wheat and the wheat belt in particular, located it on our map, and then labeled it with a real piece of wheat! We also got hands-on by visiting Colvin Run Mill, a working gristmill in our area that does real demos on the weekends! A docent was there to walk us through how the mill works, which was very cool.
TORNADOES
I was going to tie in an entire extreme weather unit since the midwest includes tornado alley, but timing was getting tight with our schedule, so I put it off until the southeast. We got into tornadoes in particular a little bit, but we are saving the good stuff for the next region.
IOWA
CORN BELT
Since Iowa is the largest corn producer in the United States, we did a mini unit on corn and seeds while “visiting” there! We read The Life and Times of a Corn Plant by Charles Micucci, which was a great way to kick off our learning. We learned about a corn plant’s parts and life cycle, and so much more.
We also focused on seeds in general. We read the two following books which I HIGHLY recommend when studying seeds. The first was great for observing the different types and kinds of seeds. We learned about the difference between monocot and dicot seeds and how corn seeds are monocots.
Seed School, by Joan Holub and illustrated by Sakshi Mandal, is a wonderful story about a seed that doesn’t know what he’s going to be when he grows up. Along his journey of figuring that out, you learn about the different kinds of seeds, what they need in order to grow, and how not all seeds are the same. At the end he becomes a mighty oak! I thought it did a fantastic job explaining these things in a way kids can understand! Highly recommend.
We got hands-on with this by taking different seeds and germinating them. We then planted them in our vertical planter to watch the sprout and grow roots. Germination NEVER fails to get kids excited! It’s always been one of my favorite things to do because kiddos are always amazed at how long their shoots grow. You can measure these every few days, record how they change, and then plant them to watch them grow even further!
We also added some corn kernels to Iowa on our large map to make it fun!
NORTH & SOUTH DAKOTA
CRAZY HORSE MONUMENT
After watching our videos and reading about North and South Dakota, we “visited” the landmarks of Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse. We read the book Crazy Horse’s Vision, by Joseph Bruchac to understand more about who Crazy Horse was. Afterward, we watched a video about him and another about the monument, its history, and its progress.
The Lakota have differing opinions on the Crazy Horse monument. Some think it is an honorable way to educate people on the values of their people, and others think it is an insult to what Crazy Horse stood for. I found quotes from Lakota people supporting both arguments and printed them on one sheet to read through easily with my son. After reading through the second column of quotes, my nine year old said, “Hm, I hadn’t thought of it that way.” Definitely a sign of a great lesson, right there.
I did not know the full history behind this monument prior to this, but I did have questions on why its progress has been slow. Doing the research and this lesson was quite eye-opening for me and definitely gave us much to think and talk about.
MOUNT RUSHMORE
After visiting Crazy Horse, we moved on to talk about Mount Rushmore. We read the book, Hanging Off of Jefferson’s Nose, by Tina Nichols Coury, which is told from the perspective of Lincoln Borglum, the son of sculptor Gutzon Borglum and the reason the monument exists today. We watched a video on the process of creating it and discussed the differing opinions about it as well.
To add in some hands-on fun, my son did some carving of his own into a simple plaster mold. I let him have access to my clay carving tools and he carved out his favorite thing in the universe at the moment: a dragon! We could’ve gone a little more in-depth with it, but I just let him do what he wanted. He enjoyed working with the tools.
ILLINOIS & MISSOURI
For Illinois, we focused on Chicago and learned about deep dish pizza, which was fun. My son hates pizza so we did not make any to try. lol But we did watch this funny video about kids trying it for the first time!
For Missouri, we “visited” the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and took a virtual field trip up to the top!
OHIO
For Thanksgiving we visited my husband’s aunt and uncle who live in Ohio right on Lake Erie, so I made sure to cover Ohio that week. We did our normal research on state facts and reviewed the Great Lakes (we did a more in-depth study on these with the northeast unit). It was really neat to actually see one of the lakes in person!
Well, that pretty much sums up our midwest region unit! We tied in our reading units as much as we could in addition to all the reading we did to go along with our states and landmarks. We did also do a conifer unit, but that was centered more around Christmas and the books we were reading about that. You can read more about that unit HERE!
Onto the southeast region!
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