Well, it’s been a minute! A lot has been going on the last few months (both personally and in the country…whew!), so my apologies for just now getting this post up and running. This school year we did a year-long unit focused on the different regions of the United States, and this post is about the final one we did: the west region! You can find my posts on what we did for the other regions here:
I must admit that we didn’t do quite as much with this region as we did with some of our others, although we still did a good amount because the west is such a diverse region. This time of year and the end of school is such a busy time for us! But we had fun nonetheless!
INTRO
As I’ve mentioned in my last posts, we use lap books and an oversized map to keep track of our travels (you can find links to the lap books we used in the northeast region post linked above). This keeps a lot of our learning in one place, which is helpful when you cover so much! Here is what they looked like for the west region:
We also reference a paired passage for the west region, which are created by Jill Russ, the same creator of the lap books. We came back to this paired passage often as we worked through this region.
Also, for each state we locate the state capital, observe its flag and learn about its state abbreviation, symbols, and population.
UTAH AND COLORADO – Rocky Mountains, Great Salt Lake and Salt Flats, Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon
ROCKY MOUNTAINS
Before getting into the Rocky Mountains specifically, we learned about the different types of mountains. I got these great 3 part cards by Montessori Print Shop:
We read about the Rocky Mountain range and observed it on the physical map in our atlas. We learned about Pike’s Peak and took a virtual field trip there:
GREAT SALT LAKE AND SALT FLATS
My son really enjoyed learning about the salt lake and now wants to go swim in it! We learned how the Great Salt Lake produces 4 million pounds of salt a year, which he was totally amazed by. We watched this video that gives 5 fun facts about the lake:
We tied in some science and did a little experiment to go along with this. We just added some salt to water and dissolved it then put it in a small, shallow dish. We took it outside in the heat and let it sit for a couple of days to see what happened. My son was able to see how the water evaporated, leaving behind the salt! Just a tip: check the weather before doing this lol. Our first attempt failed because I didn’t check the forecast and it rained the next 3 days, so be sure you have a few days of sun before starting!
We read about the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah and watched portions of this drone video to get a feel for what it is like there:
ZION NATIONAL PARK AND BRYCE CANYON
Before we moved east from California we were able to take a family vacation to Zion and Bryce Canyon. We hiked at both locations and loved it so much. Bryce is so interesting and has some really interesting rock formations that we all thought were very cool. We went back over our pictures from our visit and posted a few on our large US Map.
ALASKA – Inuit Culture, Mount Denali, Tundras, and Oil
STATEHOOD AND KLONDIKE GOLD RUSH
My son was wondering why Alaska is part of the United States since it is so far from the other states and borders a different country. So we talked – in 9 year old terms – about how Alaska was bought from Russia in 1867 because Russia had recently had a war with Great Britain, a country that owned Canada at the time. And given the harsh conditions of Alaska, Russia felt it was a good move to be rid of it. This brought us into a conversation about gold and how the US believed there was a lot of it in Alaska. We read about the Klondike Gold Rush, which eventually brought 100,000 people to Alaska. We watched real video footage of this taken by Thomas Edison, which you can find HERE.
We learned that today, Alaska provides us a military presence in the Arctic and control over oil, fisheries, and other resources there.
TUNDRA & MOUNT DENALI
We read about different landforms of the west from our paired passage and reviewed what a tundra biome is by watching a Brainpop video about it and reading through the True Book we got from the library about tundras.
We read the beautiful book Up On Denali: Alaska’s Wild Mountain, by Shelley Gill and illustrated by Shannon Cartwright. The illustrations are so lovely and my son really enjoyed looking at them.
And we took a virtual field trip through Denali National Park!
INUIT CULTURE
We began our mini unit on Inuit culture by watching this NG video:
I found the books Children of Midnight and Meet Lydia from our local library which focus on Inuit children from different areas in the Arctic telling about their lives. We spent time reading through the different accounts and talking about them. It is important to me that my son understands that the Inuit population is diverse. Unfortunately, there are a lot of stereotypes surrounding the Inuit, so we spent most of our time reading about and listening to Inuit people explaining their own culture. We focused most on those located in Alaska, but we explored some of the ethnic diversity throughout the entire Arctic.
The following are some videos we watched to understand more about the Inuit culture:
We tied in literature by reading the folk tale The Polar Bear Son: An Inuit Tale by Lydia Dabcovich. In this story, a lonely old Inuit woman adopts an orphan polar bear cub and raises it as her son until jealous hunters in the village threaten the bear’s life, forcing him to leave his home and his “mother”. We focused on summarizing with this story, as we have been working really hard on this skill all year.
OIL & THE TRANS-ALASKA PIPELINE
We learned about the Trans-Alaska pipeline and why it was built in the west region. We read about the opposition from Native people about it being built and how it has had leaks over the years, which also led to learning about permafrost. We did watch this old video about how the pipeline was built. My son is really interested in how things work, so I always try to find explanations about things like this:
WASHINGTON STATE – Temperate vs. Tropical Rainforests, Mount St. Helens
MOUNT SAINT HELENS
Since we had learned about the different types of mountains, we spent a little bit of time talking about the explosion of Mount Saint Helens and how it impacted the surrounding area. We watched some videos showing the explosion and listened to some interviews with people from the area. We didn’t do a ton with this, but it is definitely impressive and shows just how powerful these volcanoes can be.
TEMPERATE vs. TROPICAL RAINFORESTS
My son had some prior knowledge about tropical rainforests, but since we were exploring the west region, I decided to tie in some science and explore more about them and also learn how temperate rainforests are different.
We reviewed what climate means and we went over what my son already knew about rainforests in general. This video about rainforests by National Geographic is a great intro:
We then focused in on temperate forests and read about how they differ from tropical. We took a virtual field trip to the Hoh Rainforest with this National Geographic Kids video:
We tied in literature with two incredible mentor texts for comparing and contrasting: The Great Kapok Tree by Lynne Cherry and Just a Dream by Chris Van Allsburg. These are two texts I have used in my classroom over the years, but I never used them together, and I totally should have! They are perfect for comparing and contrasting. I took bits and pieces from this lit study by Teach With Tracy and this one from Coach’s Corner to build this mini lit unit.
We spent a few days on each book and at the end of the week my son filled out the Venn diagram from the Coach’s Corner unit comparing and contrasting the two books:
CALIFORNIA – The Golden Gate Bridge, Humpback Whales, San Diego, Kate Sessions, Disneyland and Rollercoasters
Well we spent quite a bit of time “traveling” in California. We probably didn’t NEED to, seeing as though we have lived in both northern and souther CA, but the state is so diverse that it is easy to tie in a bunch of concepts in with it.
SAN DIEGO AND KATE SESSIONS
We tied in a literature unit into San Diego by using the book The Tree Lady: The True Story of How One Tree-Loving Woman Changed a City Forever, by H. Joseph Hopkins. I highly recommend this book! It’s all about Kate Sessions and how she changed the desert landscape of San Diego into a lush, leafy city now known for its beautiful parks and gardens.
We worked again on summarizing and my son did such a great job with his summary! It’s not an easy skill to master, but we’ve been consistent about working on it all year. I was impressed!
THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE
We tied in some engineering into the west region by going through this amazing lesson by Mystery Science! It focused on how bridges are able to be so strong, and we had fun doing the experiment together. The goal was to see if he could make a bridge to hold a lot of coins. He had to plan and execute a design, then improve the design and try again.
My son remembered seeing the Golden Gate Bridge in person when he was younger and how impressive it was. We went back through our pictures from that trip, remembering the great experiences we had. You can read all about that trip HERE!
I also got a little 3D model to do for fun since my son enjoyed the one we did of the lighthouse and Statue of Liberty so much.
HUMPBACK WHALES
We tied in more science and literature to California with the book Humphrey, the Lost Whale, by Wendy Tokuda and Richard Hall, which is the true story about how a humpback whale got trapped in the San Francisco Bay in 1985.
After reading the book we watched news coverage of the event when it happened:
My son had some questions regarding how different whales feed, so that led us to do some research on this. We found this video about baleen and toothed whales to be very informative:
My son also read an informative article from Readworks.org that was on his reading level about barnacles on whales and answered questions about it. I am a big fan of Readworks because it’s FREE and you can search and filter everything by subject and reading level.
DISNEYLAND AND ROLLER COASTERS
My son LOVES rollercoasters like his mama, so we HAD to incorporate it into a CA travels as we “traveled” through the west region. We actually got to go to Disneyland when we lived in SoCal, and we had a BLAST! Proof:
For fun we watched some episodes of Behind the Attractions on Disney+. Check it out if you have a little one into how things work! We also took some virtual rides on roller coasters. This playlist is a great one!
We then did this experiment by – you guessed it…Mystery Science – about energy transfer and roller coasters, which was the perfect tie-in! They also have this extension experiment, but we just didn’t have time to do it.
And if you have extra time and a kid REALLY into creating, this Imagineering in a Box unit by Khan Academy is SO COOL and walks you through creating your own amusement park!! How cool is that?!
IDAHO – Potatoes!
Besides exploring the normal facts that we do with every state we mainly just focused on potatoes with Idaho. I know, there is much more to Idaho besides potatoes, but we had a schedule to stick to!
We first discussed what my son already knew about potatoes and what he wanted to know more about. We watched this video about how they are harvested in large quantities:
So obviously we had to sprout a potato! We put one in sunlight and one in darkness (the cabinet) to see how sunlight affects potato growth. My son predicted that the potato would grow less in the darkness, so he was quite surprised at the 2 week mark when the potato that had been growing in the dark was doing better. I had hoped more shoots would’ve sprouted by this time, but you can see a little difference here:
After the two weeks, we watched this video by SciShow Kids:
HAWAII
We said aloha to our school year with none other than one of our very favorite states: Hawaii! Hawaii will forever be one of those places we will always come back to. We’ve been a few times already and have vowed to go back as often as possible. What a special place.
Now, at this point in the school year my momentum is…slowing lol. I wish I would’ve taken some time to decorate our school room for Hawaii, but I was just too tired, y’all. This was the last week of school and there was so much going on. But I didn’t feel too bad about it since we’ve been multiple times and my son knows what it is like.
We did watch this video to get some insight into native Hawaiian culture.
We also talked about surfing. We watched this video on how surfing originated:
We also watched some compilation videos on Youtube that showed big wave surfing, which my son thought was pretty cool.
If you have Discovery+, season 3 episode 11 of Extraordinary Stories Behind Everyday Things is all about how surfboards are made.
Disney+ also has a show called Wild Hawaii which is worth checking out!
Here are a couple of fun pictures from our last family trip to HI:
FINAL THOUGHTS ON THE WEST REGION AND OUR UNIT
We didn’t spend a ton of time exploring Montana, Nevada, or Oregon. We did do a virtual tour of Yellowstone, watched some videos about Las Vegas (my son has been there once), and went over some other places we have been in California such as Muir Woods, LA, Monterey, and Carmel.
Overall we had a great trip through the west region of the US. This has been such a great year-long study! It was SO much work to plan and put together, but it was totally worth it. I feel my son has learned so much about this amazing country we call home and he has a good grasp on the states and regions.
We plan to culminate this unit by visiting the American History Smithsonian Museum here in DC this summer, as we have yet to visit and it seems like a great time to check it out.
I have decided that this coming year we will be doing another year-long study, but this time it will be a trip around the world! I’m finishing up the planning for it now, and I think we are going to have a great time, so stay tuned!
Enjoy the rest of your summer and try to give your hearts and minds a little rest. These have been some challenging times.
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