ideas for state (Colorado) history notebook/scrapbook

[poodlemama]

Hi Everyone,

I'm planning on spending a quarter doing colorado history with my kids. I found some good book of stories, a few biographies, etc. and I'd really like to do a beautiful scrapbook to go along with things. I'm wondering if anyone has done one for their state or has any ideas.

 

So far I'm thinking

 

1. take a picture of the kids with the state flower, animal, bird etc.

 

2. Biography reports for Baby Doe, Molly Brown, the Elitches (and then go to the park) Kit Carson---fellow Coloradoians is there anyone else you think it's important they know?

 

3. Pictures of some history parks--Molly brown house, Four mile park, a gold mine, (I'd LOVE to take them to Masa Verde but don't think I can swing it right now)--other field trip ideas?? .

 

4. Narrations from the book "tales, trails and tommyknocker" that I'll use as my 4th graders reader

 

Any other ideas? If you've done a different state I'd love to hear about that too--I'm sure it would give me some ideas as well!

 

Thanks!

[amyco]

We did not do a state history scrapbook, but I think it's a fabulous idea!! I like your idea of taking pictures with the state flower, etc.

 

We're in Colorado, and I had a blast with Colorado history. We all loved "Tales, Trails, and Tommyknockers". I also purchased some Colorado themed coloring books at Borders. One of them explained the state flag and what each element represents (among other things), another one had flora and fauna.

 

Last summer we also took a trip to Bent's Old Fort, which is east of Pueblo. That was really fun and a great way to do "living history" and learn about the Santa Fe Trail, and the Bent brothers. I'm hoping to make it to Georgetown someday to ride the train and see a mine.

 

Another book I highly recommend for about ages 10 and up is Little Britches by Ralph Moody. It's the story of his childhood in early 1900's Littleton on a homestead. My ds really enjoyed this series. Another good book is Colorado History for Kids by Linda Wommack, probably available from your library.

 

I also recommend visiting any and all local history museums you can. If you are in the Denver area, be sure to see the Littleton History Musuem, it's fabulous. Also the Colorado History Museum in Denver has programs for schoolchildren during the year, and some of the living history speakers are just outstanding.

 

Good luck and have fun!

[Karen in CO]

Check out the Anasazi Heritage Center for more ideas. Maybe try making a trip to one of the old gold rush boom towns like Silverton. Colorado Springs has a free Pioneer Museum. Other ideas: Denver Mint, Cripple Creek has mine tours and a heritage museum with lots of artifacts and little train that takes you to another gold town, Miramont Castle in Manatou springs serves high tea. There are also several places like the Sand Creek Massacre site and other historic places that you could visit.

[Satori]

:bigear: Soaking this all in for the future!

 

We went for a wildflower hike today (we live in the mountains) and saw plenty of our state flower - Colorado Columbine! You're welcome to use this image if you like.

 

[GraceinMD]

I'm wondering if anyone has done one for their state or has any ideas.

 

We did Maryland history - can't recall whether we took 15 or 30 wks to cover it, but we ended up with a wonderful lapbook!

 

All my notes, etc. are on a previous computer, but as best I can remember:

 

The whole back was a flag of MD that the kids (this was a co-op class) colored while we read something or other to them. This formed a pocket, but ... I don't know what we put into the pocket! Maybe field trip brochures?

 

The whole front (where the two flaps came together) was covered with (homemade) stickers of the state flower, animal, bird, game, etc. (as you mentioned).

 

Inside we added an extra page or two.

What I remember was one page full of "matchbook" folded papers, each with a name/pic of a famous Marylander on the outside, and a very brief (maybe 2 sentences) "bio" of that person on the inside. We had about 20 of these. Somewhere near that, we made a really cool fold-out timeline of Maryland history (the whole thing folded into a flat square, but when pulled out, was a diagonal accordian-like piece of paper - maybe you could google Dinah Zike's instructions - I can't recall what it was called.)

 

We also had several overlay maps of the state - one with the counties numbers (and then labelled on a chart below the map), one (over the basemap, printed on vellum) with the waterways, one (also vellum) with the topograhy (which wd work beautifully with Colorado!). These were all colored in various ways.

 

We had a whole section on the Chesapeake Bay watershed - I recall a big wheel that you could spin (on a central brad) to show what was predator and what was prey (or something like that - also would be easily adaptable to the wonderful wildlife you have in CO!) or where a certain animal was in the foodchain. (Sorry these are not more specific, but maybe my vague recollections will spark something wonderful for you!). We took pictures of each child with a lab we did of things that pollute the Bay. (before and after pics of an aquarium filled with water --- based on http://www.vaswcd.org/documents/Education/Sixth%20Grade%20Watershed%20Curriculum.pdf (starting at pp 37) - it was a very graphic demo that the kids seemed to really like.)

 

We also had a (appx) 20-question "quiz" along one of the inside flaps - fun facts about MD or something like that - a piece of paper folded in half longways, with the questions written on the outside, and cuts between the ??, so you could lift up the ?? and see the answer underneath (on the uncut part of the paper).

 

We had a section about politics - where the kids looked up their senators and delegates, their district number, etc.

 

I know there was more, but maybe this will give you some ideas.

At the end of the class, we decorated a big cake to look like the MD flag. (Google the flag and you'll see what nuts we were!)

 

Have fun! I loved all the lapbooks we made over the years, even if my non-crafty son didn't so much!

[MtnTeaching]

Not sure how old your kids are, but the Colorado History Museum does "walking" tours of downtown Denver that are fun and we really learned a lot. The State Capitol is definitely a good stop while your down there. Fun to watch if they are in session.

 

As mentioned before, "Tales, Trails, and Tommyknockers" is awesome!!

 

We tried to follow one of the ps school Colorado History books at first- I think it was called something like "Crossroads in Colorado History" - Dry as dust! That lasted about 2 days before I cried "uncle" - it was excruciating.

 

A fun thing to do is to make (or try to) authentic CO pioneer recipes. "Pioneer Potluck:stories and recipes of early Colorado" collected by the volunteers of the State Historical Society of Colorado - was in our library.

 

We really enjoyed adding some CO geology in, too. Golden has a good geology museum at the School of Mines. And the visitor's center in Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs has a suprisingly good movie about the geology of CO.

__________________________________________________________

 

FOR ANYONE STUDYING THEIR STATE: I found these great notebooking pages: http://www.notebookingpages.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=66&products_id=209

States Study - Individual State Notebooking Sets $3.95

 

Each individual state study set includes 37 notebooking pages designed to help you create a notebook study of that state. Buy all of the individual states study notebooking sets in one of our combined sets for a great value and a great study!

Each set of individual state notebooking pages includes:

 

 

• Notebook Cover (1 pg)
  
  
• Map, Nickname, & Motto Page (1 pg)
  
  
• State Symbol Pages - bird/flower, tree, flag, seal, song (5 pgs)
  
  
• Map Pages (2 pgs)
  
  
• Template Pages for History, Government, Famous People, Inventions, Tourism (2 pgs each)
  
  
• Template Pages (Blank) - for your own topics (4 pgs)
  
  
• State Symbol Pages (Blank) - draw your own symbols (11 pgs)
  
  
• Cutouts for Notebooks or Lapbooks (3 pgs)
  
  
• 2 pgs of Info, ideas, directions, and state facts.
  
  

 

These are fully reproducible for your family or single classroom!

 

__________________________________

 

Have fun! I grew up in GA and my memory of state history always seemed to revolve around Oglethorpe for some reason. The CO pioneers are a lot of fun to study! What a sturdy bunch!

 

[poodlemama]

Thanks for all the great ideas! We too have the book PS textbook "Colorado Crossroads of the west" thanks foe the "dry" warning...maybe we'll skip it and just go for more of those wonderful field trips everyone suggested!

 

:001_smile:

Lindsey

[dhudson]

We did a basic time line of the CO state history and then we did two weeks of traveling around Colorado and came home and each child wrote a report or made a project. My oldest did a report on the history of Co and how his family line (both sides) came and settled in Colorado. We have a stories of family members coming to Co in a wagon train.:001_smile: My dd did a lapbook of the wildflowers of CO and my ds a diorama of Mesa Verde.

 

Some field trips we took :

 

Glenwood Springs, Durango Mesa Verde, Silverton (Silverton/Durango train), Telluride, Ouray, Grand Junction

 

Bent's Fort, Trinidad musuem, La Junta

 

Denver's capitol building, The Denver Mint, CO History Museum (which had some great book on CO)

 

Estes Park