State the Facts! + Free Georgia Unit Study Resources #hsreviews #statehistory

I am a member of the Schoolhouse Review Crew. All opinions are my own.

Latin and Penmanship {Laurelwood Books Review}

Mary is going into 3rd grade this upcoming September and I thought it would be a great time to start studying state history. I remember studying state history when I was in 4th grade in school. I lived in Florida at the time and we learned so much during that year. And at the end of the year, our class took an overnight trip to St. Augustine, Florida to see the history. It was amazing and I still remember it to this day. For our state history course, we are using The State the Facts: a Guide to Studying Your State from Laurelwood Books.
State the Facts: a Guide to Studying Your State is an amazing book that can be used with any state. The first section of it lets your kids learn the important people who work for the state you live in like the Governor, Senator and even down to your Mayor. I really loved that because we actually have a Congressman who has an office right in our hometown. Hopefully one day we can make a field trip to see him for our book.
The next pages involve helpful scripts for calling people like your local librarian and Congressman to find out more information. I really enjoyed this part because sometimes kids have no idea what to say over the phone.
After that you have pages to complete about your Statehood. You get to learn and research when your state became a state, learn about commonwealths, draw your state flag and research important men and women from your state.
The book is full of helpful suggestions with a section about reading about your state and finding books at the library and even finding famous people like inventors and scientists that were from your state. This was a fun part of the book because I love research!
The book also is helpful with learning about the city you live in too and there are even suggestions for planning field trips which I loved!
Another great part is looking for outdoor things that are special to your state like certain trees and birds. This is when a nature walk will be perfect for exploring!
We live in Georgia and I already had an app on my phone to help me and Mary learn our birds and plants we see. The apps are pretty cool and allow us to take pictures of the plants and it populates a database based on the picture. Then we can record it in a journal to say we saw that plant. For the birds, we get to describe the bird the best we can and based on native birds around our area, it will tell us what we most likely saw. You wouldn't believe some of the birds we have seen and learned from it!
With State the Facts: a Guide to Studying Your State, you literally have it all in a workbook. It's the perfect research tool and it makes learning about your own state so much fun! Overall it's the best learning tool I have seen for actively learning about your state and helping with the research.
I know Mary and I both will be learning so much more when the school year starts up again! And I can't wait to start getting field trips set up to meet some of the people in government in our own town!