If you’ve been following our homeschool year shenanigans, you know we are “traveling” through the regions of the United States all year and tying in all kinds of subjects in along the way. (You can read about our midwest adventures HERE and our northeast adventures HERE!) We just finished up our adventures in the southeast region, so read on to find out all that we did!
INTRODUCTION
We always begin with reading an overview of the region we are traveling to in our US Atlas book, which I’ve linked in prior region posts. We look at the physical and political map of the region and read some overview info about the area. We use lap books for each region to record our learning, which is a great way to keep everything in one place. These particular ones are modified from the originals that I got from Jill Russ, but we do use most of them. I just added the products and resources web and the food/music/people portion. (You can find links to the lap books in the northeast region post linked above.)
As we go through each state we also add to our oversize US map that I had printed on foam board, which has been such a fun addition to our travels! For the southeast region we added some extra things to states we spent a little more time in and did some fun activities with. We spent a lot of time talking about Mardi Gras and jazz, so we added Mardi Gras beads around Louisiana. We added real sand around the coast of Florida and some hurricane clouds in the Atlantic since we also did a mini-unit on hurricanes during this time. My son was also born in North Carolina, so we added his baby picture to it and we currently live in VA, so we added our pic there as well. I love how we can personalize it to what we are doing and also my son’s personal life. I can’t wait to see it all filled up at the end of the year!
There are some states we didn’t spend a ton of time in. We went through the normal basic facts and added them to our lap book, but we didn’t spend as much time talking about Alabama, S. Carolina, Arkansas, Mississippi, West Virginia, or Tennessee. We live in Virginia, so we didn’t do too much as far as that goes since we are exploring it all the time! And we talked about North Carolina briefly since that is where my son was born and we lived for three years. But here is what we mostly focused on:
FLORIDA – HURRICANES, EVERGLADES, AND ASTRONOMY
Our first stop in the southeast region was Florida, which was all about science! I actually posted separately what we did with each of these mini science units because there was just SO much. Click on each link below to see the units in action:
HURRICANE UNIT POST
MARSHES, SWAMPS, AND THE EVERGLADES POST
We went over the peninsula landform using our nomenclature cards. And nope, I did not draw the illustration. I would not have draw it like this. *snicker*
THE KENTUCKY DERBY
Our next stop in the southeast region was Kentucky, which led us to learning about the famous Kentucky Derby! What fun we had with this! We used this PowerPoint from Happy Educator on TpT as our anchor for learning about the Kentucky Derby.
We read Seabiscuit the Wonder Horse to tie in some literature:
We learned about what being a jockey is like by watching this video:
We learned about jockey silks:
And then my son made his own jockey silk design using this template from Classy Chick on TpT:
We learned about Kentucky Derby traditions like My Old Kentucky Home, the rose garland and the history of derby hats. I made a fake rose garland for my son to wear the day we talked about this and I wore my one crazy hat. And of course, we had to have some (non-alcoholic) mint juleps (just make a simple syrup steeped with mint and add to lemonade)!
If you have a child who would be interested in creating their own derby hat, this would be a great opportunity to have some fun with it! My son was not into doing this lol.
Here are a few videos we watched about these traditions:
We tied in some math by reviewing probability terms and concepts and then we played these Kentucky Derby-themed probability games I got from No Monkey Business on TpT. During the last game, the horse race (which was so fun!), I found a crowd cheering sound effect on youtube that I played in the background, which was a fun touch!
LOUISIANA – CRAWFISH, MARDI GRAS, AND JAZZ
CRAWFISH
We tied in some life science to our southeast region unit by learning about crawish/crayfish! My son had never seen one before, and he was fascinated that they looked like tiny lobsters. We watched this great video to learn more about them:
And then we watched this funny one of kids trying a crawfish boil for the first time. My son refused to try them, so this was the next best thing! Haha! We’ve watched a few of these Kids Try videos before and we always end up laughing!
Well, this last part was a complete fail! I had high hopes that my son would think dissecting a crawfish after learning about them would be so incredibly awesome, but he had quite the opposite reaction! He wouldn’t even SIT at the table next to it. He made me COVER ITS EYES in order to just touch its claw. No lie. I’m laughing as I’m typing this. Oh well, I tried my best. I got this crawfish kit for super cheap from Home Science Tools.
NEW ORLEANS AND MARDI GRAS
Of course we HAD to take a virtual trip to New Orleans during our southeast region unit! We began by locating New Orleans on our map and watching this intro video about the city:
I made sure to line up Louisiana with Mardi Gras so we could learn about it on the actual day, which made it all the more fun. I surprised my son that morning by decorating the entry of our learning space with Mardi Gras decor to spark some excitement:
We first read an informational reader from Rooted in Reading about Mardi Gras and then watched this fun video made by kids about the holiday:
We decorated our own Mardi Gras masks while watching livestreams of some of the parades happening during the day.
We then watched this video which goes behind the scenes of all the festivities:
And then this one about how they make the floats, which we both thought was very cool!
Of course we had to make authentic New Orleans gumbo using this delicious recipe from Tastes Better From Scratch, which won’t be happening again for awhile because MAN my arm was tired from stirring that roux for so long! But it was worth is because it made a ton and it was so so good.
And of course we HAD to get a king cake! We bought ours from a local bakery and it was delicious! They did not bake the plastic baby in the cake; they gave it to us separately, so we just sat him on the top. Ha!
JAZZ UNIT
We spent the rest of the week learning about jazz! Our literature unit for the week was centered around the book Trombone Shorty, by Tony “Trombone Shorty” Andrews, which is an autobiography of this incredibly talented man’s life and how growing up in the New Orleans neighborhood of Tremé and being surrounded by music inspired him to become the incredible trombone player he is today. The illustrations by Bryan Collier are fantastic and earned this book a Caldecott Honor Award. Trombone Shorty also received the Coretta Scott King Award in 2016!
I loved this passage of the book and how it tied in with our gumbo:
With this story we focused on autobiographies in reading and how they differ from biographies. An easy way to help kids tell the difference is to have them write a short paragraph about themselves and then the next day have them write the same sentences but in third person. I modeled this first and then my son did his own. I’d post a pic of it, but it has a lot of personal info about both of us. If you are a classroom teacher you can have kids write paragraphs themselves, then switch with a partner and have the partner rewrite each sentence in third person. It’s a great exercise to understand the difference between the two!
We learned a bit more about Trombone Shorty after reading by watching this video of him performing at the Jazz and Heritage Festival in New Orleans.
We also watched this interview with him:
We then went on to learn all about the origins of jazz, how it has evolved, some of its legendary musicians, and the different instruments and styles that make it unique! We used this Google slides presentation by Music With Mrs Morgan on Teachers Pay Teachers as a base for this portion of our unit. It was a great anchor for moving through the different eras of jazz, from ragtime, New Orleans jazz, big bands and swing, and bebop to the present.
I also used this Jazz Bracket activity from Becca’s Music Room. It has a lot of jazz clips from famous musicians, so I used it to listen to specific ones as we moved through each era. It was nice to have them all in one place and saved me a little time.
We learned about syncopation, improvisation, scat, and the instruments of jazz by watching some videos from Jazz at Lincoln Center Jazz Academy’s YouTube channel. These videos are short and explain these aspects well:
We listened to many jazz musicians from each era, including Scott Joplin, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, Charlie Parker, Melba Liston, Dizzy Gilespie, and Thelonius Monk (to name a few). We also read the book, Duke Ellington, by Andrea Davis Pinkney and illustrated by Brian Pinkney, which is also a Caldecott Honor book and Coretta Scott King Award winner.
Both of us learned so much from this unit! I really enjoyed learning how jazz evolved and has influenced the current music we listen to.
GEORGIA – PEANUTS
After learning a bit about Georgia, we focused in on peanuts since Georgia is the leading producer of peanuts in the United States. We read The Life and Times of the Peanut by Charles Micucci. I love Micucci’s The Life and Times Of book series! We read the Life and Times of Corn back during our midwest unit and so I knew this one would be perfect when we got to Georgia.
We watched videos on how peanuts are harvested both industrially and manually and then explored some peanuts for ourselves.
We also learned about George Washington Carver by doing a close read of an article about him and then writing a paragraph about him based on what was learned.
GULF OF MEXICO
We reviewed what a gulf is with our nomenclature cards and labeled the Gulf of Mexico on our large map. Again, did not draw the illustration myself. lol
The last thing to mention about our southeast region unit is that we did try some more southern food including fried catfish and hushpuppies. My fam isn’t a huge seafood fan, so it’s rare for us to eat it in our home, but I wanted to make sure my son tried catfish because I have fond memories as a kid going fishing for it with my grandfather and then coming back home and helping my grandma fry it up for dinner. My son liked it okay, but I don’t think we will start incorporating fish into our weekly dinner rotation any time soon.
And that’s a wrap for the southeast region of the US! Now it is onto the southwest! Stay tuned!
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