 Hey everybody, welcome to the Waldoch Way. I'm Jessica, and today's video is going to be a look inside the brand new Traveling the States curriculum. The 50 States book is the only required, must-have resource that you're going to need to complete the Traveling the States curriculum. Another highly suggested resource though is the Eat Your Way Through the USA book, which is going to give you recipes for each of the states. If you're not interested in cooking together or you don't really need recipes, this can be skipped if you would like, and this is the only thing you will have to have. Let's go ahead and look inside the teacher's manual. Inside the teacher's manual, you are going to see two different options for completing the Traveling the States. You can either do it in alphabetical order, which is listed here, or you can do it in the order of statehood, so in the order that each state became a state. Obviously, you can pick and choose and do it any way you would like, but these are two suggested options. Then you have your required resources and suggested resources, such as books, games, hands-on activities, et cetera. And then there are a few different lesson plan checklists so that you can do Traveling the States in a few different ways. One is called a basket method or a bucket method where you put everything you need for one state in, and then you just check all of the things off as you do them. No real timeline, kind of however you please to go about it, and when everything's checked off, you know you've completed that state. Another suggestion here is a two-day checklist, so it gives you everything that you're gonna need to do on day one and two to complete a state in two days. There is also a three-day checklist and a four-day checklist. So you can choose whether you just want to do it at your own pace, two days, three days, or four days. Then we get into the lesson plan. So this is the meat and potatoes of the curriculum. So it's gonna tell you what pages that you need to read in the 50 States book for each state. There is one chapter book for each state. This is going to be a fiction chapter book, and it is around the third to fifth grade level, so you can either have your child read it independently or you can use that as a real app. And then there are also two additional picture book suggestions, so that's three book suggestions for each state about the state or set in the state, one being a chapter book, two being picture books. Then you're going to have the YouTube playlist that's clickable or scannable with the QR code, so that gives you everything you're gonna need for all 50 States. Then we come to the appendix, and that is where we have the postcards that we're gonna send from each of the states, our snapshot pages where we can draw pictures of the things that we did in those states, and then also the steam landmark cards. So there is a landmark for each of the 50 States. You can have your child build this with Legos, they can make an art piece out of it, they can build it with blocks, you can have them create a world in Minecraft. All of these are suggestions in here, so that they are doing some sort of hands-on landmark for all of the 50 States. There is a brochure template that they can create a brochure for each of the states, or for maybe their favorite state. And then in the 50 States book, there are inspiring people suggested for each of the states you can see here. There are also the presidents in the back of the book, and so I have included two biography templates for older children for a famous or inspiring person. One is listed with the place of death if the person has already passed away, and one has residents today if the person is still alive currently. Then there are also two review pages you can choose to have your child do at the end of the year if you would like. This one is listing which of the states they are. So like number 48, you would list Florida. And this one is listing the capitals for each of the states. So you can have them do them and review at the end of the year, or you can do them multiple times just to test and see how much they know so far. Let's go ahead and look inside the student notebook. It begins with a map your travels page. So here you will have your child or student color in the circle beside each state and then color the coordinating state to match as you travel to each state. So whatever order you decide to do it in, this is just for them to be able to map that. And then each state is set up in the same way. It starts with an original artwork coloring page and each of the coloring pages includes the state bird or animal, the state tree and the state flower. And then the state name along the right hand side to make it easy to locate in the student notebook. You also have a flag profile. So what the state flag looks like. Information about the state flag. So the year it was adopted and then a little bit more information maybe about why that's their flag or what it looks like, et cetera. And then a place here for them to color the flag to match appropriately. A state profile page. So you have the outline of the state and for them to mark the capital city. If your children are older, you could also have them mark things like major rivers or landmarks. List the capital city name. Write out the two largest cities. What the state is named for. This state had date and order. Interesting facts about the states and moments to remember from history. All of this information can be found in the 50 states book. And then the last thing for each state is the nature profile. So you're gonna have your child illustrate the state bird or animal, the state flower, the state tree and then write information about it. Now because we wanted to keep the required resources as minimal as possible, this information is going to be included in the nature profiles that we have created. So you can see here each state has a realistic picture of the state bird or animal, the state flower, the state tree, it lists its name, its scientific name and a few facts about it. So it's the year that it was designated the state tree flower bird or animal and a little bit more information. And each state is just like that. Let me find one that has the animal. There was a lot of birds that repeated. So about 10 states we chose a popular state designated animal versus the bird just to give some variety. One of our personal favorite parts of traveling the world was the passport. Emily loved getting to glue the flags in and I absolutely love being able to stamp it. So I decided to use that same concept in traveling the states as well. So there is a traveling the states passport with a page with all 50 flags. So your child or student can cut the flag out and glue it in, then you can either write or stamp the date as you're traveling to each of those 50 states. And of course it wouldn't be a Waldoch Way product if it did not include the game pack. So also included is a game pack with three different games. The first of which is a memory game. So you have these little cards with the state shapes holding a sign that has their name on it. So you can play memory. You could actually even play go fish with them. But it's an easy way to have even the youngest kids flipping over matching and identifying what each state looks like. The second of which is a state capital bingo game. So here's your calling mat. You could have somebody call out the capital then you would mark the corresponding state on your bingo card. So for instance, Montgomery, you would use a bingo chip or an eraser of some kind and you would mark off Alabama. The third of which is a top Trump's war style game. These cards include the state name, the state capital, the flag, population size, land mass size and the number of the order it was brought into statehood. So the way this game plays is you would have cards in your hand like war to people. You would take turns who ever won the last round would get to pick which thing they want it to be. So let's say I had New Jersey, my biggest number is population size and then whoever population size is larger gets to keep those cards. It is a great way to study additional facts about each of the states also while having fun and playing a game.