Teachers.Net Lesson Plans

#100. Projects for USA units

Geography, level: Elementary
Posted by Susan Smith (smith@teachers.net).
Pat Henry Elementary School, Lawton, Ok USA
Concepts Taught: graphing, poster making, architecture, miles/kilometers, National parks, longitude-latitude,regional geography

Projects for any region of the USA- individual or group: find the longitude/latitude of each capital in the states, make a new license plate or new state flag using information about the state, box project(diaramas) for the type of geography ( mountains, swamps, tundra, grassland, desert, plains, etc); make models of famous landmarks such as White House, Golden Gate Bridge, Mount Rushmore; map all national parks using a symbol to distinctly set that park off from all others, such as Old Faithful in Yellowstone; using extra copies of National Geographic Magazine have class cut out wildlife to make collages for different regions; PASS THE MAP- The first child picks one major city to visit, measures how far it is from their hometown and puts a pin into the map with a little flag indicating mileage to that city. Then a piece of yarn connects the two cities. Each student that follows connects their city to the previous one using lightweight yarn. It is interesting to see how many times they cross paths. To make it a more difficult math problem have the kids add all the distances to see how far they traveled as a class. The teacher should find the last city visited and connect it to the hometownT
Other activities are tourist attraction posters, brochures for a particular state, and a matching states to capitals board. You label a state with a number and students find the capital city on a card from the capitals pocket that you place next to the map. They place this card on a poster you have labeled 1-50 on the correct line to match the state number already labeled. This is a great review right before a test on states & caps.