Montana state study

I visited Montana as a kid during our family reunions. We’d all descend on some town that I cannot remember beyond it was trading on its famous Old West cowboys and outlaws. I mainly remember visiting Custer’s Last Stand and then heading over to a saloon out of the Old West. Yep, that’s what I remembered about the state. So, let’s see what we learned with this Montana unit study for our geography lessons.

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Montana booklist

There were some truly fun books that I remember reading with the kids when they were younger.

• Buffalo Music– One of several books in this idea of bringing the buffalo back to the plains, they all have such fun unique viewpoints
• Dust Devil– I LOVE this tall tale
• My dog’s a chicken– This is a cute book that takes place in Montana, but not much to help with the study
• Eat Like a Bear-I love collage artwork, and this is a well-done example of it
• The wolves are back– this is an interesting look at how ecosystems work, huh I just realized it’s by the same person who wrote My Side of the Mountain
• I am a grizzly bear– a nice look for younger kids at the life of a grizzly bear
• Custer’s Last Battle: Red Hawk’s account of the Battle of the Little Bighorn– I LOVE Paul Goble’s artwork and pretty much every one of his books I’ve read, this was no exception

What was in our Montana Unit Study

Montana is another state where I didn’t have too much for us to work with. Custer’s Last Stand and then some other fun books.

• Old Faithful project– whoops, this picture was taken before I updated and learned I had Old Faithful in the wrong state (this is what happens when you visit 3 states in a few days, and don’t keep them all straight) This project is actually part of the Wyoming State Study
• What happened when the wolves came back– this was my absolute favorite activity of the whole unit, after reading the book, we went in and watched a short documentary on what happened which really drove the lesson home (this activity didn’t originally come from this, but would work very well with it)
• Battle of Little Bighorn- there is a rather interesting “The Way I Heard It” about the Battle of Little Bighorn, BUT it’s also not one I’d play for my kids because it’s FULL of double entendres.
• Grizzly bear minibook- these came back again and it was kind of amusing to see the kids remake what they once did in preschool and kindergarten.
• Dust Devil, make your own tall tale– The example I’m linking to is actually from a different lesson about mythology, but tall tales are somewhat the United States own attempt at creating their own mythology.

Useful videos for Montana state study

And that’s it, our Montana unit study, nice and straight forward.

More Geography lessons

• Utah booklist
• Singapore Unit Study
• Using picture books to teach maps
• Texas geography unit
• Teaching geography without a curriculum