Hi and welcome to our Road Trip USA week on West Virginia!
West Virginia became the 35th state on June 20, 1863. It was given statehood status with the “agreement” that the citizens would phase out slavery. It was named “The Mountain State” due to the rugged terrain of the scenic Allegheny Mountains that cross the state. It is also known as the marble-making capital of the U.S. The state has large deposits of silica-rich sandstone, and has become a major producer of fine glassware and glass marbles!
Here are some things we learned about this week:
- Located West Virginia on our wall map
- Read our National Geographic Atlas and located Charleston, WV using the map coordinates.
- Worked on our 50 States and Capitals song
- Learned about the state and it’s flag
- State Bird: The Cardinal
- State Flower: The Rhododendron
- State Mammal: The Black Bear
- State Reptile: The Timber Rattlesnake
- Food: The West Virginia Slaw Dog, Apple Butter
- Classified the animals of West Virginia
- Read: If You Lived at the Time of the Civil War by Kay Moore
As we read through our state facts, the kids colored in their West Virginia worksheet. We keep all of these in our Road Trip notebook so they can flip back through easily for review.
The West Virginia Slaw Dog is a popular treat in this part of the country. (There’s a recipe in the Road Trip USA curriculum.) West Virginia is also home to the annual fall Apple Butter Festival.
We also filled in our Virginia and West Virginia mini-books and added them to our southeastern notebook page. We use our state worksheets for reference.
And here is our completed southeast notebook page. You can also use the mini-books in a regular lap book as well.
Since we are at the end of a region, we played some fun games for review.
I printed out the southeastern puzzle and let them all review the state names using only the abbreviations. You can also cut this apart and have them piece it back together.
We also reviewed the northeastern state puzzle as well, then put them both together and reviewed.
Next we pulled out our state flashcards for the northeastern and southeastern states and matched them up to the capital cards.
We closed our week by adding our state flag to our Travel Journal!
And that wraps up our West Virginia study and our time in the southeastern region of the United States! If you’d like to come along with us on our Road Trip USA journey, click the image below to learn more!
The “unofficial” food of West Virginia: the pepperoni roll. ;-). One of its best kept secrets. At my high school, we would have them every other week. The lunch ladies used to make the dough from scratch. They are so good!
You got that right Annette! Can’t beat a ball of dough and pepperoni.
Also, I have yet to take my kids to the local glass museum. I have vivid memories of visiting a glass museum when I was young and although I think I could make it educational and more fun it is still not on the top of my list in exploring our great wild and wonderful state.
Megan
I just want to thank you for all your amazing posts and shared ideas and information. I have been reading your blog for quite a while now and I have now started to use your monthly meal plan as a guide to develop my own monthly meal plan – it is making a huge difference in how many trips to the grocery store I am making. It has also added to the creativity of the meals we are eating in my house – THANK YOU!!
I love this curriculum. Thanks for sharing.
I’m from WV- and never heard of a West Virginia Slaw Dog! But a pepperoni roll…. that’s the ticket.