Plains PDF

Plains is the fourth unit of the U.S. States geography course. It includes a study of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa, and Missouri. Students will also learn about the folktales, legends, and other stories of America.

This unit is a guide for the mentor to use in creating lessons and directing discussions and learning. It is not a textbook for the student.

Thus unit includes sections on:

• America’s Stories
• North Dakota
• South Dakota
• Nebraska
• Kansas
• Minnesota
• Iowa
• Missouri

Each Layers of Learning Geography unit includes library lists of books, a family read-aloud suggestion, hands-on activities, printables and paper crafts, sidebars for extra learning, and tools to help you assess student’s progress and mastery. Learn more about how Layers of Learning works.

Hands-on Learning

Mentors choose books or videos to learn about the focus of that day’s lesson and then direct the students in a hands-on activity. Here are some of the choices from this unit:

• Create a crafty book project about your favorite American tall tale or legend
• Make a “fracking” cake to understand the North Dakota oil boom
• Sketch and paint your own tourist poster for Mount Rushmore
• Make an open-the-flap barn about Nebraska facts
• Plant a tree for Arbor Day, founded in Nebraska
• Play a “What’s From Kansas?” game
• Create an interactive notebooking page about the glacial history that formed the lakes of Minnesota
• Carve your own Iowa State Fair butter sculpture
• Sketch and label a soil horizon profile of Iowa’s loess soil
• Craft a 3-D model of the Ozarks
• Plus much more!

Flexibility

This unit was written to be used for a month but contains plenty of content for many more weeks of learning if you choose. This is a pick-and-choose curriculum, meant to be cycled back to in the future when your child is older. As such, it intentionally includes far more material than you can possibly cover in a month.

Plains is also part of the overall U.S. States course.

Printable Pack

This unit comes with a downloadable Printable Pack that includes all the student worksheets. The printables can be copied as many times as needed for your family or class.

Extra Resources

This unit comes with extra weblinks and a YouTube video playlist on the U.S. States Resources page.