Maine Unit

Maine seems like such an interesting state to me. Since it is over on the East Coast, I tend to lump it in with all of the other East Coast states as being very crowded and big cities, but that is not in the least bit true. It’s actually not a particularly crowded state. Then I think of maple syrup and leaves changing color. Searching for what to learn about for our Maine Unit added a few new things for me to learn about the state of Maine for this geography lesson.

And I thought I’d written this way back when we first studied the state, but no, no I had not. Instead I had three really weird posts about seaweed, a pirate chest, and lighthouses…

(there are affiliate links in here)

Main Unit resources

Our library had a few books on the state of Maine, and a few of them were more generic books, that are useful, so let me dig around and see what else I can find.

• 53 Maine Facts– That’s right, 53 facts, not just 50, but 53 facts, this site is what led to remember I needed to add lobsters to my list of things to look up
• Maine government website
• Maine from National Geographic for Kids

Which leads us into…

Maine Unit videos

So many bad videos…

It is so incredibly cheesy. But no matter what it is always better than

But, my kids’ absolute favorite YouTube video for the United States, Captain Jay, would be who they always hope has a video, but sadly only had a few state videos.

It’s kind of amazing how much great information he has in such a silly video.

Maine booklist

I went to my library and grabbed all the books I could find related to Maine, which was not as many as I wish there were.

• State Profiles Maine– a great book for a 3rd-grade reading level to give you an overview
• Welcome to Maine– I love this series, it’s probably the best book series on the individual states, and it had some information I hadn’t found when searching up for facts on Maine (though I think both Massachusetts and Maine claim Robert McCloskey), because of this book I’m going to add in a few more books I didn’t originally include in my list
• The Little Island– a Margaret Wise Brown book about the tiny island in Penobscot Bay, I need to track this one down, because I wasn’t able to read it ahead of time
• Blueberries for Sal-such a sweet book about a young boy picking blueberries
• Getting to Know US Presidents George Bush– not being a recent president, or someone famous (nothing impressive happened during his presidency and he wasn’t assassinated) there are not many books on him, so this is the best I have
• Spiny lobsters– this is the book my library had on lobsters, obviously pick up what your library has
• Wakame Gatherers– the story of some immigrants who gather seaweed for their family to eat, I once had a post on this, but folded it into here because it didn’t really add much (I’m slowly slimming down my blog to make it more user friendly, it’s a long and slow process)
• Sugaring– Jessie Haas has some great books, so pick them up if you see the name on the cover, they are slowly disappearing as they are older and I love the simple tales of family told in the books
• Maple Trees– I love these simple science books for early readers, this is a great series
• From Maple Trees to Maple Syrup– this series follows a topic from start of production to your kitchen table and usually gives you a recipe to try. This time it’s a maple candy recipe (which I did not try because I have bad luck making candy recipes)

As you can see there are a whole slew of great books from Maine. Sadly a few of the books we used the first time we studied Maine are no longer at the library, so I couldn’t include them in this booklist.

Maine Unit notebooking pages

As we watched the various Maine videos, mainly the pirate one, while I included all of those videos to let you choose your favorite, we really only watched the Pirate Jay video, we filled out the United States notebooking pages (you can get a coupon for them if you join my newsletter), and then I added in some Maine mini-books to create a great unit.

Mini-books I made:

• blueberries
• Maine state symbols- since this was from way back when I have a state symbols mini-book
• George Bush
• lighthouses
• maple syrup
• lobster
• moose

More 1st-grade learning fun

Since we first studied Maine way back in first grade, let’s see what other first-grade ideas I have squirreled away.

• Seashell sort
• Vermont Unit
• Horseshoe crabs
• Apple booklist
• Dental Health lesson

Photo by and (c)2014 Derek Ramsey (Ram-Man), CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons