This year in school we are using Layers of Learning year 4. Week sixteen of school we did unit 9. Our geography topic was US economics.

Fritz told the story of The Three Little Pigs and we used it to discuss opportunity cost.

We learned about supply and demand.

We learned about marketing.

We planned a birthday party by selecting things we wanted for it, but staying within a budget.

We learned about scarcity.

We learned about giving.

This year in school we are using Layers of Learning year 4. Weeks fourteen and fifteen of school we did unit 8. Our geography topic was the plains states.

We did mapwork.

We learned about Mount Rushmore.

And the Badlands.

We did some butter carving.

We learned about loess soil.

And about bird habitats.

We figured out which things weren’t from Kansas.

We learned about how a perfect arch is made.

We added Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri to our passports and colored them in on our big maps.

This year in school we are using Layers of Learning year 4. Weeks twelve and thirteen of school we did unit 7. Our geography topic was national parks.

We watched drone footage of several national parks.

We looked at where national parks and national historic sites are around the country.

Each boy picked a national park to learn more about (Cameron picked Sequoia, Fritz picked Wind Cave, and Adrian picked Everglades).

We learned about landmarks in several national parks.

This year in school we are using Layers of Learning year 4. Week eleven of school we did unit 6. Our geography topic was the southwest states.

We did mapwork of Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, and New Mexico.

We looked at my father’s bolo tie and made bolo ties of our own.

We watched a YouTube video of landscapes around Arizona and one about the Grand Canyon.

We watched a video of drone footage from New Mexico.

We learned about the Albuquerque Balloon Festival.

We learned about Carlsbad Caverns.

We compared The Road Runner with road runners (when we moved to Texas we felt somewhat betrayed that road runners weren’t three feet tall or blue in reality).

We talked about industries, agriculture, and people of the southwest.

We learned about the regions of Texas including our own, the south Texas plains.

We learned about Oklahoma! and scenes around the state of Oklahoma.

We made flip pages about things around the southwest states.

We colored in the four southwest states on our big folder maps.

We added Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma to our passports.

This year in school we are using Layers of Learning year 4. Weeks nine and ten of school we did unit 5. Our geography topic was US political maps.

We talked about Congressional districts.

We talked about the population distribution across our country and specifically where we live.

We discussed how an electoral map showing mostly one color is meaningless unless considered along with population distribution.

We learned how ZIP codes are made and which states are in what regions.

We learned how to calculate distance on a map (though all three boys said if they needed to calculate the distance between cities or how far they had to go to get somewhere, they’d just use Google maps).

We marked on a map where several things in our house were made. Unsurprisingly, most things were made in China.

This year in school we are using Layers of Learning year 4. Weeks seven and eight of school we did unit 4. Our geography topic was the mountain west states (Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Colorado, and Nevada).

We labeled a map with the mountain west states and their capitals.

We learned about Kit Carson.

We made Idaho Potato Gems cookies. Adrian especially liked them.

We learned about Buffalo Bill.

We learned about outdoorsy things to do in Montana.

We looked at the sis states’ flags and picked our least favorites to redesign. Cameron picked Idaho.

We learned about the Hoover Dam.

We learned about the Pony Express.

And boom towns.

We added all six states’ flags to our passports.

We finished up this study by coloring in the mountain west states on our folder maps.

This year in school we are using Layers of Learning year 4. Weeks five and six of school we did unit 3. Our geography topic was US Landscapes.

We found various land formations including the two major mountain ranges on the big wall map.

We watched a video of some of the amazing natural formations around our country.

We learned about the major rivers in the US.

We learned about the mountain ranges and where they are.

We learned about the Appalachian Trail.

We learned about the Hoodoos in Utah.

We learned about the Great Plains.

We learned about the Plains Indians.

And we learned about the Great Lakes.

This year in school we are using Layers of Learning year 4. The second two weeks of school we did unit 2. Our geography topic was the Pacific states.

We learned about various political people who were from California (Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Earl Warren).

We made elevation maps of California.

We made population density maps of Oregon.

We made pages with various facts about Oregon.

We made precipitation maps of Washington state.

We made an apple tree of Washington state facts.

We made a resource map for Hawaii.

We filled up a surfboard with facts about Hawaii.

We found and labeled the major cities in Alaska.

We made an Alaskan dogsled team.

We added the state flags of the five states we “visited” over the last two weeks to our passports.