Florida Unit

Hi! Okay, this is Future Ticia 2024 coming in and updating this post for when we redid the unit in high school. I’ve clarified the projects we did in our original Florida Unit back in 2011, and then updated with more information for a more thorough geography lesson and all that for our current United States Geography lessons.

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No,  really, I just didn’t want to have the kids focus on Disney, so we focused on NASA and animals.  That sentence only makes sense with my original title of “Florida with no Disney in sight.”

Our Kindergarten Florida Unit

I am leaving this mostly as I wrote this back in 2011, but adding in a few comments, and linking specifically to the projects mentioned, or letting you know where it is now.

Here are our projects:

TOTALLY AWESOME MOMENT:  Batman: “Mommy, I want to read to Daddy the book I read to you last morning.”

WOO HOO!  Okay, yes I know it’s because he wants to work on earning a prize, but still.  He wants to read.

All right, back to what I was saying, our projects:

On the left hand side covering one entire side is our Everglades book with hundreds of animals. (Florida Everglades lesson)

On the right are the two animals I decided to have us learn about.  It had to be two because I wanted them to learn about the manatee because it’s so unique, and besides then I could get this song stuck in someone else’s head.

And then we also had to learn about dolphins, because those are Princess’ favorite animal, or one of them.  You can’t forget “Ponies!” (Animal Report minibook for early learners)

And we of course did our usual state symbols (and with all of these if you click on the picture it will take you to the download, it is now on my Subscriber Page, JOIN MY NEWSLETTER).  This time I tried it with the pictures already in the boxes, and I don’t like that as much, but now I know.  “And knowing is half the battle.  Go Joe!”  Sigh, we got a DVD of some of those episodes and it doesn’t include the silly little PSA’s at the end of the episodes, so the kids do not get that joke at all.

Finally, we learned about NASA and space study.

But, for rather obvious reasons this project won’t fit into a lapbook.  So, we headed over to Homeschool Share and looked at their materials.  If you haven’t been there, totally check it out, one caveat: it’s a little hard to navigate.  I found this piece by looking up Neil Armstrong, not NASA or Florida.

NASA accordian lapbook

We did read one other book, but I didn’t put the pieces in for it because I couldn’t find them, and besides I didn’t need to recall my boys favorite thing about this book.

Posts I’ve written about Florida

Okay, back to Future Ticia 2024, which is present Ticia once I’ve rescheduled this, but I wrote a lot of Florida posts, and I wrote an entire series on visiting Disney World (which I’m gonna admit I may collapse into one post at some point, I’m not a travel blog and no one really comes to this blog for tips on traveling).

• Florida ocean layers science lesson
• Florida Everglades lesson
• Space Shuttle craft
• Disney World tips for the Unorganized Mom
• Magic Kingdom
• Epcot
• Hollywood Studios
• Animal Kingdom
• Alligators
• Ponce DeLeon and the Fountain of Youth

Florida Unit Resources

All right, let’s share some Florida resources I found!

• Florida facts– what the state of Florida thinks is most important for everyone to know
• Nat Geo Kids Florida– always a good resource
• Encyclopedia Brittanica Florida– remember when we all had a shelf full of encyclopedias in our house?
• Florida Duckster– I used this site all the time when I was teaching public school

Now let’s see what I can find for YouTube videos. Will our favorite pirate have a video or will the rapping birds have a video? Or will I take psychic damage from Homeschool Pop?

Okay everyone, get ready to take psychic damage!

You just took d6 psychic damage from that video.

You only take a d4 of psychic damage from this.

Okay, I’ve got one more video, and I’m going to warn you I haven’t watched all of it because I just don’t have the heart to watch it.

Okay, that’s all of my online resources, now to head over to the books I found for Florida.

Florida booklist

Here are the books I found, minus my favorite which is sadly out of print.

• Everglades– a true facts book that is nice
• The Swamp where gator hides– a story following an alligator and how his movement causes all of other animals to move
• Welcome to Florida– I like this series a bit more than the True Books, partially because it’s aimed for a younger age so it’s a bit more fun to read out loud
• The Great Pig Search– Absolutely ridiculous book about a family looking for their lost pigs in Florida, yes it is as silly as it sounds
• Django– a Florida legend of a young boy who uses his fiddle to save animals from the hurricane, it’s a really fun story
• Parrotfish and sunken ships– a great look at the sealife around Florida, I love Jink Arnosky
• Sunken Treasure– Another author I love, Gail Gibbons
• A Manatee Morning– An older Jim Arnosky book (2000, so weird to think of that as “older”), but there are so many great animals to learn about in Florida
• Roy makes a car– I learned about Roy Tyle from Stuff You Missed in History Class, so it was fun to see a picture book about him, though this is a bit more of a tall tale
• Saving American Beach– I like stories like this, so I was happy to grab this from the library
• The Timucua– a True Book on this tribe, nothing particular to say about it

And that is all of my Florida books, not to the last part of our Florida Unit, our notebooking pages!

Florida Unit: notebooking pages

We filled out our United States notebooking pages (get them free if you JOIN MY NEWSLETTER as part of the welcome series). At this point the kids were not big fans of the minibooks and I mainly wanted to finish learning about the states so they could have familiarity with the different states than so they had an in-depth knowledge, so they did not complete the minibooks.

As you can see, it’s fairly easily filled out, and I’m quite amused Florida has two nicknames. Here are my facts I wrote down in particular:

• two nicknames: Sunshine State, Alligator State
• sugar can fish
• it has the most hurricanes and tornadoes of any state
• top travel destination in the world
• St. Augustine is the oldest European colony

• By Mmcknight4 – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4671958
• Averette, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• Originally published February 18, 2011