50 States Presentation: Georgia and Florida

This past week I stepped back and watched my kids as they researched GA and FL for their presentation at our co-op meeting. I had agreed to "teach" these states, but when my girls found out what I was doing, they wanted to help. Because I couldn't drop everything to tell them all the facts about GA, Cayli impatiently looked up GA in one of her books and online. She wrote everything she researched on notecards, printed off a few pictures from Google, and brought them to me. She said she went ahead and prepared for GA for me. Gotta love a kid with initiative and enthusiasm!
So I bought her some posterboard, sketched the outline and let her paste on all her pictures.

With FL, I did most of the research, but let Kenna and Mabes design FL with our findings. They went to the co-op as beach bums and Cayli "interviewed" them. Here Mabry is pointing out that she likes to swim on the Gulf of Mexico side of Florida. Kenna had said she prefers to swim on the Atlantic Ocean side. Of course, neither one of these country girls has ever been to FL and they would probably swim anywhere, even a mud puddle. But both were incredibly fascinated by the amazing wildlife of the Everglades. I think they'd rather go there than Disney World.

Then we completed our worksheets for our book of 50 states. We did images of the 2 states with fingerprint art. The kids colored their fingertips with markers, and then "stamped" them on the paper to form the shapes of peanuts, oranges, crocodiles, flamingoes and other artistic representations of these states.Honestly after having a week where I've spent every second surrounded by my kids, I'm loving my new role as a I pot-stirrer. I provide all the ingredients of learning and let my kids come up with the recipe. Sometimes I have to gently stir the pot to encourage the creative learning, but for the most part, they've done quite well, don't you think?