State Report - California

We have officially finished Madeleine's first school report!  As part of her social studies and science classes, each child was assigned at state to research, write a report on, and decorate a puzzle piece in the shape of their state with at least three of the landforms they discovered their state had during their research.  Madeleine was assigned the state of California.  The questionaire they were required to fill out included questions like: 

What is the capitol of the state? (Sacramento) 

What is the state bird? (California valley quail)  

What is the state tree? (redwood)

Name one interesting fact about your state: (It was the first state to have an official state insect = the dog-faced butterfly.)

Name three landforms in your state: (the Sacramento River, the Central Valley, Mount Whitney)

They also had to draw a picture of the state flag.

The report she was required to write had to have at least 5 sentences, but no more than 10, had to have a topic sentence and a concluding sentence, and had to describe the three landforms she chose to report on in the questionaire.  Here is her report: 

There are three things in California that I find very interesting.  The first is the Central Valley.  It was formed by uplifts, has earthquakes, and is home to lots of farming.  Mount Whitney is interesting because at 14,505 feet, it is the highest mountain in the lower contiguous 48 states.  Lastly, the Sacramento River is the largest river in California and is used for creating power and watering crops.  These are the three things I found most interesting when studying about the state of California.

She will have to read this report in front of her class and all the parents in attendance next week. So, we will be practicing it a lot over the weekend!

The final part of the project involved decorating a puzzle piece (all the of states, when put together, make a map of the US) with the three landforms.  We chose to cover the piece in tissue paper and glue, then used a blue pipecleaner for the Sacramento River, green puff balls for the Central Valley, and used brown playdough to make mountatins.  She decided to make Mount Whitney dark brown and then used the light brown playdough to form the other mountains in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and Coastal Mountains.

She really enjoyed doing the report - particularly the research and the decorating of the puzzle piece.  Each day since the report was assigned, she asked to work on it and was very concerned that we got it done on time.  Her eagerness probably had something to do with the fact that I let her use my iPad to do research, but that's ok with me!  If I am able to do it, I'll try to take a video of her presenting to the class and post it here.  I'm sure she is going to do great!