Wisconsin, land of cheese and… well cheese. At least if you ask my family that’s what we would say. I’ve heard it also has a football team, and some other stuff going on. The important thing to us every time we visit is to stop by the Wisconsin Cheese Factory and buy massively large amounts of cheese. However, once we sat down for our Wisconsin unit study as part of our United States geography, we learned there’s quite a bit more to the state than just cheese.
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First our books for our Wisconsin Unit Study
Most of the books my library has are from the picture book series for the Little House books, so it might be slightly skewed that way.
- Little House Picture books: A Little House Birthday, Dance at Grandpa’s, Christmas in the Big Woods, Summertime in the Big Woods, Winter Days in the Big Woods, and The Deer in the Wood– I loved these books for a nice introduction to the series
- Clarabelle: making milk and so much more– since Superman is a big fan of drinking milk and all of its’ related products, this was a big hit
- Century Farm: 100 Years on a family farm– This was a bit long, so we read parts from it, but it has a nice look at a family farm
- Extra cheese, please!: mozzarella’s journey from cow to pizza– Pizza is always a hit at our house, so of course we loved this
- Wisconsin– while we don’t read all of it, it gives a nice overview of Wisconsin
- Time for Cranberries– nice picture book about how cranberries are grown, I learned a lot from it
- The Giant ball of String– super cute fictional story about a Wisconsin town that has the largest ball of string, until another town steals it!
Our Wisconsin Lapbook Notebook
Way back when my kids were little, we actually made lapbooks, but now I’ve changed it more into notebooking pages with some lapbook elements. All of the printables can be found on the subscriber page (you subscribe to my emails right?), and the United States notebooking pages can be picked up at my store (you’ll want to subscribe because there’s a surprise in the geography sequence, hint hint coupon!).
Left hand side of the Wisconsin lapbook:
top- summary of what they remember of the Little House books and picture of one of their houses.
- Superman’s memory: There was a brick house and it didn’t went down. The Daddy sang songs and fight deers. He shoot deers. And they had two sons and the Mommy and the Daddy. And then they lived happily ever after. Then they didn’t have any lunch, was the farm picture. Then their Daddy went in a tree to shoot the deer, and that’s all I will tell you. THE END
- Princess: There was a brick house and they lived. And their Daddy was singing songs and the fire was on and and and and and and and their Mom was holding the baby. They lived happily ever after.
- Batman: They didn’t eat deer meat. I don’t know. I only know about one thing. I don’t know what else.
Can you tell they got progressively less interested in this? And Superman had help from his brother and sister.
Underneath it was a picture of Superman rolling out the pizza dough. Here’s how to make pizza from scratch according to Superman: “Make it flat. Then we roll it. Put on the crust and then cook it. Put on the sauce. Yes we need cheese, so put on cheese. Eat it.” In case you can’t tell it took a lot of prompting to get him to say even that. He was just going to cook it and eat it. We also tried to make ice cream, but that didn’t turn out so well.
Oh, and next to the Little House picture is information about the state animal, the badger.
RIGHT SIDE OF OUR WISCONSIN LAPBOOK
Top left, a fold out of what we get from cows. Superman didn’t quite glue those on how I expected him to, but that’s okay.
Top right, symbols of Wisconsin booklet.
Bottom our postcards from Treyton and Alexa at Refined Metals Academy.
Want to learn more about Wisconsin?
My husband’s family is from Wisconsin, so we’ve been on a few “field trips” up there to visit family
I just realized I combined some of those posts into one bigger post, so it’s not quite as many posts as I thought, so I’ll include other people’s posts as well
- 3 Fun Places to Take Kids in Wisconsin
- Wisconsin Duck Rides
- Wisconsin Cheese Factory
- Wisconsin printables and coloring pages
I really enjoy when you write about what your kiddos say. They should start their own blog…
Great job on Wisconsin.
Thank you for linking up this week.
Very nice! I like the idea of lapbooks, but I'm not sure what we'd do with them when they were finished.
The review of Little House made me giggle. I wonder what Anna will say. We keep reading them, and her favorite so far was Going West. She wanted me to read that one over and over. Now we have Winter Days in the Woods, and she likes it as well. She was indifferent to Deer in the Woods.
Great reading comprehension activity! Sometimes my daughter does great remembering books and sometimes horrible. You're right, probably has something to do with amount of interest. 🙂
Great Post!!! Ryleigh turns 3 at the end of the month and I am thinking of starting Geography with her in the fall 🙂 I can't wait! 🙂
Thanks for stopping by today.
And thanks for sharing your lapbook example. I'm still learning about them and it was nice to see a finished product.
Very clever! Isn't Scribd great! I want to learn more about it. Thanks for sharing.
Oh, I love this lapbook! Very cool!!!