As regular readers will know, we participate in a regular speaking and listening group. This is one of my fave groups and it’s been fab learning alongside the children. We recently had a USA themed meet and I wanted to share here the books we used as inspiration for this topic.
First up is the absolutely amazing 50 States. I wanted this book just for me! It’s an absolute riot of colour and information and there’s so much to pore over. Each state is taken in turn and a variety of information is provided about each state. Quirky facts as well as the important elements such as the state capital as well as key buildings and natural areas of beauty. We used this book a lot as part of our USA Postcard Project (which I really need to try and finish off!). The children used this book daily as part of the project and we learnt so much about the vastness of the US and the wide range of cultures that exist.
It’s beautifully set out and really is a book to explore time and time again. There is also an activity book that sits alongside this (although it is slightly more aimed at a US audience but still plenty of fun activities to get stuck into).
We also really liked the larger 50 States Fun Facts Book. This is a large board book with a jigsaw at the back. Each page has a different theme (eg: food) and provides a fact for each state. It’s set out in a grid and is a lot of fun to learn quirky facts about each state. We used this as our postcards were arriving and we learnt about each of the states.
We quite like learning about influential people and the 50 Trailblazers is a great book. Some of the people were unfamiliar to me as well and I enjoyed learning about some of these people. This is suited to slightly older children (mine are 6&7) but it’d a great book with some fantastic individuals in.
National Parks of the USA is a book that I bought last year after seeing it a few times on my social media feeds. It’s a fantastic celebration of the awesome beauty of nature and it’s inspired us to think about some of the places we might like to visit and learn more about. It’s a beautifully presented book and it can’t help but inspire the explorer in you. I have plans for using this book again soon when we look at explorers.
And, finally, we really enjoyed the 50 cities of the USA book. This book takes a city from (I think!) each state and provides a sort of map of the city completed with quirky fun facts and areas of note and importance. We liked looking at some of the cities in this book then using YouTube city guides and google images of some of the things mentioned.
