Hi, Future Ticia 2025 here, well once I reschedule this to now, this will be Present Ticia 2025, but I wrote this in 2011 back during our FIRST New Jersey Unit. This was back during our first foray into geography lessons and our United States Geography unit. Then again, as the kids were in high school, we did a lightning study of New Jersey to remind them of what they had learned earlier. So you’ll get to see our original material that are not available online, and then the version with older kids (which is still appropriate for younger kids because really they were too old for them).
New Jersey Unit Resources
Future Ticia 2022 says: There is no Geography Now type of source for United States geography, and my questions to various people trying to find good video sources came up with very little, so here are the three videos I didn’t absolutely hate (Future Ticia 2025, who hasn’t realized I had started updating this post, but that third video is just gone, so there are two videos):
My kids made fun of the video, its robotic voice, and how it made them fall asleep.
I didn’t show the kids this one because it’s clearly aimed at elementary kids, and my too cool for school (not really) kids would have spent most of their time making fun of the video. But if you have elementary kids, it’s a great video.
Even More Future Ticia 2025 says, Ahhh, Homeschool Pop, we watched so many videos with you. eventually we all started making jokes saying “Take 1 D4 psychic damage because it’s that painful.”
New Jersey Booklist
Heading over to my library to see what books I have saved…
- Brothers at Bat: the true story of an amazing all-brother baseball team– a cool story of a large family that produced 12 sons who all loved to play baseball!
- Digging up Dinosaurs– Some of the earliest dinsoaur digs in the United States were in New Jersey, so we read about this book since there is not one about that specific dig
- The First Air Voyage in the United States– Sadly this book is no longer at our library, because it’s a cool story of the first hot air balloon voyage in the United States
- Heroes of the Surf– the true story of two boys helping save a sailing ship during a storm in the 1880s. Obviously not a necessary book, but our library had it, and it’s well worth grabbing if you can find it.
- The Hindenburg Disaster– A tragedy that occurred in New Jersey and probably one of those huge events of the 20th century that will be forgotten in a few decades as a minor blip.
- Meadowlands: a wetlands survival story– a great story about how a particular wetland is changed over time as different people come and go.
- Minnie’s Diner: a multiplying menu– I included this because New Jersy is the state with the most number of small diners, and it’s one of the things they list as a point of pride for their state, and it’s a good early math book for kids to practice multiplication.
- New Jersey– Again a nice solid book for lots of facts, but not one you are just going to read out loud to everyone
- The New Jersey Colony– Much like the last book, a solid book that has lots of information, and would be great for any 3rd grader writing a report, but not one you will sit down and read out loud.
- One Giant Leap: a historical account of the first moon landing– Buzz Aldrin is from New Jersey, so we found a couple of books on the first moon landing
- The First Moon Landing– This is not the book we got from the library; apparently, that doesn’t exist on Amazon, instead, this is a book with the same title, but a more cartoonish style.
- Picking apples and pumpkins– Little-known fact, but there are apple orchards in New Jersey, and pumpkin patches.
- Picture book of Thomas Alva Edison– I love this author for early biographies. He just writes some of the best ones.
- Thomas Edison: a brilliant inventor– There are a lot of picture books for Edison.
- Thomas Edison: lighting the way– What’s cool about having so many books about him, is I can recommend books for many different age levels.
- When Washington crossed the Delaware: a wintertime story for young patriots– I’ve been joking with my kids about this event a lot recently, so I’m loving that there is a picture book about it. Also, Washington as a genius at the tactical retreat.
Back when we first studied New Jersey, we also had some books about:
- blueberries- it’s one of the items New Jersey is known for, possibly even the state fruit, but the book I initially had on our list is out of print, and the only other super famous book obviously takes place in a different state.
- horses- the state animal, but I didn’t grab any specific books on them for the list
- I originally put the Valley Forge activity here, but it’s actually supposed to be in the Pennsylvania Unit.
Our Original New Jersey notebooking pages
I accidentally deleted my original paragraph on this. So, we put together a mini-book about the state symbols and an animal report minibook on horses, which is their state animal. This made The Artist very happy, as that was her favorite animal at the time.
Now, this is where I made a mistake. I accidentally wrote down Valley Forge as in New Jersey; it’s actually in Pennsylvania, so I have since moved that to the correct state study, but when originally writing this, it was on there.
I need to start a graph of how many different states have the bee as their state insect.
Future Ticia 2025, giving a quick insert here. I have since made a more formalized version of the minibooks. When we studied it again in high school, I did not do this with the kids, because they just made fun of them.
Quick glance at what the mini-book covers look like.
- Thomas Edison– you have to click on the link to get the full idea, but his lab was here, and he made a LOT of inventions. The paper with his name on it has a picture of three of his inventions.
- Dinosaur dig– in honor of the first nearly complete dinosaur that was found in New Jersey. My kids still try to get out their bags of pieces from time to time…….
- Blueberries- Wildly popular book series (okay in my house, it’s out of print in reality) about two Polar Bears trying to steal blueberry muffins. One of the things New Jersey is known for.
- Diners- New Jersey has the most diners per capita of any other state I found some cute books, one of which called Minnie’s Diner, totally recommend that one, and it was going to be a great math multiplication activity. It just never happened. Seriously, I had to recheck that book about 2 times.
Current New Jersey notebooking pages
Okay, these were made using our United States notebooking pages, and you can get a coupon to get them free as part of the welcome series if you JOIN MY NEWSLETTER.
When the kids and I completed this in high school, this was more of a refresher unit, so we were not trying to go into super detail, so we filled out the notebooking pages and glued in the various pages.
Here are the fascinating facts I thought were particularly interesting:
- The New Jersey Constitution passed BEFORE the United States declared independence.
- The Hindenburg disaster happened here. This impressed me much more than my kids.
- Then I just wrote urban legend, and I have no clue why I wrote that.
- New Jersey skyline picture: By Praneeth Thalla – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=124610084
- Originally published April 29, 2011
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