A few weeks back we met for our regular speaking and listening group meet up. The theme for the session was the USA, which was suitably vague to give the children a wide range of things they could choose to study.
I really enjoyed this one and the presentations from the children were wide-ranging, varied and really interesting.
We had projects which featured surveys of favourite foods, projects that compared the USA and UK, ones on specific states, European Explorers to the USA and animals of the USA. There was a really wide and varied approach to this theme and it was really interesting to listen to.
Our Approach
The USA is such a HUGE topic that I wasn’t sure where we would start. E initially wanted to do something around the Native Americans, but later changed to looking at Washington DC. D was pretty set on doing Texas and H was a case of ‘wait and see’.
I decided to get some books (which I’ll write about separately over the weekend) and explore them with the children. In tandem to this, we also started a USA postcard project which I’ve written about here.
We talked about the USA and I tried to gauge what the children knew already; they knew bits but not huge amounts. Daniel decided pretty early on that he wanted to study Texas so I found some information specific to Texas for him to read and work through to plan his project.
The postcard project was a really good catalyst for the children to get to grips with just how big and diverse the USA is. As the postcards arrived we used this wonderful book to see where each state was and to read a little more about it. We started to complete State fact files for some of them too.
Our Projects
The projects that we settled on were to look at Texas, Alaska and Washington DC. I liked the diversity of the three areas that they chose and it was great to explore these three areas and then to compare how different they all were.
For the Texas project, Daniel learnt about the state flag, animal and other state-specific emblems. He learnt about some of the larger cities as well as the natural beauty of the state and it’s National Parks.
H studied Alaska, prompted by the box of goodies we were sent! We learnt about the flag and we talked about how Alaska was located away from the main part of the USA. We looked at the climate as well as some of the animals that lived in Alaska. H also took along the chocolate that we had been sent to share with his friends
Finally, Em chose Washington DC. We looked at the buildings in Washington DC and compared them to similar buildings here in the UK. We watched a few YouTube video tours too which were really interesting.
The USA was a really interesting topic for us to study, and it’s something we will return to again soon. We have studied different elements of American culture in the past, but it’s definitly a topic we will revisit again soon I am sure.
