When I was in third grade my school got Weekly Reader newspapers. They were small papers with a theme, one week the theme was Mount Saint Helens and the great volcano eruption. Somehow in my head Mount Saint Helens had just erupted. In reality Mount Saint Helens erupted several years earlier, and they were reporting on how the mountain was recovering after the eruption. Either way, our Washington state unit study for homeschool geography had some fun Mount Saint Helens stuff because that’s what I think of with Washington state.
Make you read to the bottom to get the Washington State printable we used.
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Washington state books
My library had pitifully few books on Washington state, but we used most of them in some form or another for our Washington State unit study.
The Floating House– This was more about traveling to there, and only vaguely related to Washington State, but I like books like this.
Volcano: the Eruption and Healing of Mount St. Helens– I told you I liked the Mount Saint Helens stuff
Will it blow?: become a volcano detective at Mount St. Helens– I don’t remember much about this, but it’s fun
Who is Bill Gates– because you can’t talk about Washington state without talking about Bill Gates and how Microsoft has changed the world
Chinese Immigrants in America: an interactive history adventure– sadly we didn’t get to dig into this one
Washington– a generic book about the state, but full of information
E is for Evergreen– I love this series, and while my library did not have THIS book, I did use the publisher’s website for activity ideas
Our Washington State activities
Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse- I never came up with a good activity for this, but I find it fascinating as a piece of history. You could make a bridge
Mount Saint Helens eruption– this was a big hit with everyone
Oregon Trail– we’ve done several projects with this, but this is the only one I’ve written about so far
Oregon Trail game– all right, so I got this one after we finished the unit, but I’m adding it in because if I’d owned it then we would have played it
Sadly we didn’t have a lot to do with this state, but I did have fun reading some of our books.
And don’t forget the Washington State Printable
More Geography here
Cool activities! We are thinking of visiting Seattle this spring 🙂
I go back and forth on wanting to visit there. Jeff thinks the weather sounds wonderful, but I think all the rain and gray sounds terrible.
It’s a beautiful state that does have days of sun. =) There are the mountains, the ocean, and then the East side that is totally different. There is something for everyone here. We live in Olympia.
How cool, it’s a long drive to get over there, so I’ve never visited, but visiting all 50 states is on my dream to do list.