Maryland Unit

At some point, I want to visit Maryland. It would be fun to see where the Battle of Baltimore took place and there are a few other events that happened there I wouldn’t mind seeing. In addition to that, there are so many cool people from there I found during our Maryland Unit. All in all, a good geography lesson as part of our 50 State Study.

Slightly more Future Ticia from when I first started writing this. I think I went as a kid, I know we drove around the East Coast, so I assume at some point I went to Maryland. I don’t know, back to my Maryland Unit.

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Maryland Unit resources

I have so many books for Maryland, but first let me tell you about a few online resources I found.

• The Maryland Secretary of State’s facts for Maryland– this of course makes it so much more reliable, also it’s not skewing towards new and celebrity information
• National Geographic for Kids: Maryland– as always a nice solid source
• Visit Maryland facts– these are much more boring facts
• 41 Things You Didn’t Know about Maryland– these really are trivia
• Famous People from Maryland– I use this as a way to find more subjects to search when looking for books, as a general rule I only make a minibook for the person if I’ve heard about them before, or once I learn more about the person I want others to learn more about them, which is why most actors, authors, and sports figures don’t get minibooks.

And let’s see who among my various YouTubers have decent Maryland videos…

As per usual, it is painful to watch, but it has most of the information you will need to fill out the notebooking pages.

This is my kids’ favorite one because it is so over-the-top ridiculous. There is no other reason, and it is not annoying to watch, like most are.

This came out AFTER we did the study, and I’m trying to imagine how my kids would respond to it.

Huh, there’s no National Geographic bird video. I’m in shock.

Maryland booklist

This stack of books sitting on my lap is so heavy, I think there are more than 20 books, so I’m going to subdivide the Maryland booklist into a few more sublists.

Maryland biographies

Little known fact, Maryland was one of the few slave states that stayed in the Union during the Civil War, and it is one of the most common places for people to successfully flee slavery. I mainly mention this because two of the most famous escaped enslaved people are from there.

• Thurgood– this was so well written and has a nice parallel in its style to his childhood where he was encouraged to present facts and build his case point by point
• The Highest Tribute– this covers a bit more of Thurgood Marshall’s personal life and it’s a good book, but I liked the other book more
• Escape North! The Story of Harriet Tubman-a decent leveled reader biography of Harriet Tubman’s life, nothing to write home about
• An Apple for Harriet Tubman– a nice bookend story of how Harriet was whipped for eating an apple as a child, but once she was free she planted apple trees on the farm she bought
• Harriet Tubman: Hero of the Underground Railroad– this book covers more of her life, but isn’t as well written as the previous book, sometimes awkwardly stating facts
• Words Set Me Free– a story of how Frederick Douglass learned to read and that inspired his desire to be free, but the book stops before he actually escapes, the afterword includes a summary of what he did after escaping
• Frederick Douglass: The Lion who Wrote History– I can’t decide if I like Words Set Me Free more or The Lion who Wrote History, both of them are pretty decent books I highly recommend
• Her Name was Mary Katharine– I learned something new, the person who typeset the official printed copy of the Declaration of Independence was a woman, this was a great story of the woman who printed the document
• Becoming Babe Ruth– a story of Babe Ruth growing up and how he became a baseball legend
• Aunt Harriet’s Underground Railroad in the Sky– technically fiction, but I have ONE fiction book, so it’s going to be in the biographies, and I have rather mixed feelings because it’s using information that is disproven, like quilts used to show the next way

Maryland nonfiction books

I found several great historical books that made me happy

• Maryland Colony– one of those nice sets of facts, especially if you’re ever writing a report, but not good for reading out loud
• A Ride to Remember– I debated putting this in biography or nonfiction, but it’s not quite as much of a biography, though it is specifically about an event in history, it’s a decent book, but I have a problem with changing how the people probably talked about themselves at the time to the modern phrase African American, it felt out of place
• The Legend of the Curse of the Bambino– only nominally related to Maryland because Babe Ruth was from the state, but a great story about how the Red Sox were “cursed” when they sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees to not win
• Goliath: Hero of the Great Baltimore Fire– I love this story, we first read it back when the kids were in first grade, and it’s such a great story of heroism

Wow, I had not realized just how many of those books were nonfiction until I stopped to look at my list. ALL of the Maryland books are nonfiction. That is crazy.

Maryland Unit notebooking pages

I know we studied Maryland back when the kids were little, so I need to take a moment to see if I have a post on that which I’ll be redirecting here… Excuse me, for just a moment…

Nope, there was no past Maryland post, just a couple of posts for some of the historical figures I mentioned.

• Harriet Tubman– I need to create separate posts for Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, but for right now they are on the same post.
• Frederick Douglass- on the list of people I really admire, Frederick Douglass is huge. If you haven’t read his biography I highly recommend it
• Battle of Baltimore– also known as how we got the Star Spangled Banner
• Thurgood Marshall- I don’t have a post for him yet, I realized as I was going through my history notes, I never had a lesson for him specifically, but instead he just kept popping up throughout my various different lessons on the Civil Rights Movement
• Maryland State Symbols- this is a holdover from my earliest days of teaching geography, and over half of the states don’t have these books
• Carousels- it was listed on my facts for Maryland somewhere, and now that I’ve committed whole-heartedly to it I’m beginning to think it may not be Maryland…
• Babe Ruth- he’s one of those old-school athletes that became a household name. I included him in my history lessons for Between Two Wars, but at the same time I kind of am not sure he is still a figure that needs to be taught.

Jyothis at Malayalam Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, via Wikimedia Commons