Hi, Future Ticia 2026 here, and I’m updating and basically rewriting our Ohio unit to make this more in line with our modern geography lessons. This was part of our United States Geography back when we were studying through the United States with a homegrown co-op studying the states as they entered the Union, and then we studied Ohio again very quickly as they were in high school to remind them about this state (because they did not remember most of their original study).
(There are affiliate links in here.)
Are you ready for one of the few things 2012 Ticia wrote:
Our Ohio lesson was full of some popular activities, and a few busts, but overall a good lesson.
Our original Ohio Unit
We completed our Ohio lesson in one week, but there were several books I wasn’t able to fit in that I wanted to do something with, but I didn’t have quite enough for a full second week, so we moved on.
What’s included in the lapbook:
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- My Great Invention- Ohio is the home to the Invention Museum, and I found a great book about inventions taking place in Ohio. The kids designed their Lego creation and then wrote about it in their book.
- Covered Wagon– Anything that is a cut and paste is a hit around here. This was no exception. The boys loved figuring out how to best protect people and what they REALLY needed. The girls loved filling their wagon with kitchen stuff.
- Neil Armstrong, what I want be when I grow up– After reading about how hard Neil Armstrong worked to become an astronaut we talked about what we need to do to get the job we really want when we grow up.
- State Symbols pages – another ladybug. I really wanted to do something with the trilobites, but couldn’t think of a good activity.
- Anyone have a good trilobite activity?
Sigh, I can’t click on that image to delete it… Stupid 2012 Ticia who would randomly put things on the left or right. It looks cool and all that, but man it does make it difficult for me now all those years later.
Okay, that’s what I wrote back then, let’s move on to what I would write now.
Ohio Unit resources
Let’s start off with a quick bit of research to find some links on Ohio. This can be helpful for you to know some facts for looking at your library to find more books on Ohio.
- Nat Geo Kids: Ohio– I always like them for a good quick resource
- Ohio State government– The official state government facts
- 50 fun facts about Ohio– from the City of Cleveland, which is where my picture from Ohio is from. I just couldn’t find any really obvious landmarks for Ohio. That’s what happens when your state isn’t known for any big buildings or huge landmarks
Now, let me see which video we ended up watching for our Ohio videos. We rotated among several different videos, and there were ones we enjoyed, and there were ones we endured.
Ohio videos
Okay, prepare to take psychic damage. I found it.
Take D4 Psychic damage as you watch that video, but that’s what we watched.
Now you also have this, which has the feel of possibly being somewhat AI-generated. So maybe take D6 damage as the robots attack you.
This came out 8 years ago, why didn’t this show up in my search when we were originally searching for videos? This is so much better than the videos we usually watched. Heal D4 as you don’t feel insulted.
https://youtu.be/qholiha5NFo?si=q31VkW-C3K7aN-nh
Okay, this one can’t be embedded, but I’ll keep it in here because it’s another one that is not insulting to your intelligence. I will let you heal D4 again as I liked her narration.
Even if I couldn’t embed it. Seriously, it might be the best of the ones I watched today.
Ohio books
All right, let’s dig up the books we used. I think there must be a publisher based in Ohio because there were over 300 books there, according to my library and most of them were just random books. So there may be more books that I missed, and a few of these came to my library after we did our most recent unit, so I haven’t read them.
- Night boat to freedom– I loved this story of a young family that ranaway from slavery to freedom, because this is a story moving from Kentucky to Ohio I think I have this book listed in both states
- The day the river caught fire: how the Cuyahoga River exploded and ignited the Earth Day movement– I have heard about this story on Stuff You Missed in History Class, but this book wasn’t in the library when we last studied Ohio, but it looks fascinating
- One Giant Leap: The Story of Neil Armstrong– I remember reading this story back when the kiddos were little and it was a great story about the moon landing and Neil Armstrong in particular, who is from Ohio
- The Giant of Seville: a “tall” tale based on a true story– This is a fun story, and is one of those fun stories that doesn’t have much historical significance but is fun to know
- Allen Jay and the Underground Railroad– The interesting thing is most Underground Railroad stories take place on border states because the enslaved people had less distance to escape to freedom
- Freedom River– Which is probably why so many of the stories from Ohio are about this. That are there are several prominent towns in Ohio that were known to be made of escaped enslaved people
- A crown of stories: the life and language of beloved writer Toni Morrison– Another book that was acquired after our study
Ohio Unit notebooking pages
We used the United States notebooking pages (which you get a coupon for if you join my newsletter as part of the welcome cycle)
Now I could have put the notebooking pages in again, but by this point I had figured out my kids primarily filled them out to make sarcastic comments and stupid answers, so I gave up on them. It was no longer a learner opportunity. So we only filled out these pages to get them to learn just a little bit here.
My interesting facts:
- not officialy a state until 1953, I need to look this one up because I am curious
- Keahoga River (spelled wrong) caught fire thirteen times, and the last time was in 1969
- its’ nickname is from the Buckeye tree
- It has the only US flag that is not a rectangle
More random homeschooling ideas
- Hawaii Unit
- studying primates
- How to make applesauce with kids
- Paddington book club
- King Tut’s funerary art
Originally published March 21, 2012, but I’ve basically completely rewritten this.
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