North America Part 2: Pre-K 5/K

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Ana's Week

​Going into the North America week, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I had a lot planned for the week, and some of the concepts like money, naming the states, or naming the presidents could have caused the week to be too intimidating and stressful for the girls. However, this ended up being one of my favorite units of the year!


I think one of the smartest things I did when planning was really focus my lessons on learning three concepts: the presidents, the states, and money. We focused first on the states, and I found some great items that really helped us learn our states this week (puzzles, color-me-in map of all the states, a felt states and landmark activity, and a magnetic map). Having a lot of ways to check the map of the USA out was great, and we were able to reach out goal of finding and naming 10 states by week’s end. However, the best thing we found for the week was a book called The Scrambled States of America. Not only is it a silly and fun way to learn the states with a goofy story about the states changing locations, but there is a great Amazon video of the book that you should definitely watch alongside it. There is also a video called The Scrambled States of America Talent Show that was super cute too.


Aria loves George Washington, so we had fun doing crafts focused on him and Abraham Lincoln in honor of President’s Day. We did some fun masks and built Lincoln’s house during co-op, and we learned facts about these presidents along with what makes a president and what laws Aria would enforce if she was president (everyone has to play outside and do science experiments during rest time and no bedtimes were two of her laws). There are lots of fun videos on Youtube about presidents and states that we spent an hour watching and learning from during the week! We didn’t reach my goal of learning lots of president names, but we were having a lot of fun with those two so we ended up staying focused on them.


Money is still something we need to work on post this week, but we had a good introduction to how much each coin is worth and played a really fun game I bought off of Oriental Trading that was all about counting money and amounts. Being super visual really helps when talking about money.


Overall, we learned a ton this week and had a lot of fun doing it, which is the best of all worlds! I will continue to work on states, presidents, and money during the year, but this week was a really fun push in the right direction! Hope you check this unit out and consider doing it in your home (whether over president’s day or not). Perfect intro into America before starting history next year. ​