The Sonlight 50 States Unit Study provides a great set of notebooking pages for writing a report about any of the United States. I've lived in Illinois for most of my life and so have my children, so I have often thought that we should learn more about where we live. What makes Illinois, Illinois? Would my kids recognize the things that make our state special? I was delighted to find a way to cover these subjects in the Sonlight 50 States Unit Study.
Note: I have received a free copy of this product in exchange for review consideration. I have also been compensated for my time in writing this review.
What is Notebooking?
Notebooking means finding information and recording the most interesting and important bits in our own notebooks. One can do this simply by having a child reiterate what they learned about a subject, either writing it down on their own or with the help of a scribe. It can be kept in a spiral notebook, notebook paper, or a 3-ring binder, or even in a computer document, I suppose. These things are much more likely to happen, however, with a clear structure and plan.
That's where Sonlight's 50 States Unit Study comes in! They provided me with all the notebooking pages, as well as clear instructions and suggested lesson plans progression, that I need to put together a complete Illinois state study without additional stress about what to study and when.
I found a 3-ring binder to keep our notebooking pages together. Sonlight's pages come pre-3-hole-punched for convenience. They're also numbered.
Notebooking in this way means that my kids are not just circling things on a worksheet but are actually putting what they've learned into their own words. I think notebooking like that is an ideal way to internalize the things that they have learned. Notebooking means my kids have to think clearly about what to say. I know that drawing and writing about Illinois certainly has helped me learn more about my state, and I'm inclined to remember more.
There is another benefit to notebooking. In the past, I've done notebooking for many subjects, including history and science. It's true that my youngest kids may need my help to write their thoughts down, but my older kids can use notebooking as handwriting practice. For all of them, writing their thoughts for a Social Studies unit study gives them handwriting practice.
About Sonlight's 50 States Unit Study
Sonlight's goal is to make learning fun with fantastic books and hands-on learning.
Just like they aim to do, Sonlight's 50 States Unit Study requires an engaging picture book, The 50 States, to go along with the learning. This is an oversized picture book with brightly colored maps, illustrations, and facts about each of the states in the Union. Each two-page spread addresses a different one of the 50 states, showing an over-sized map as well as names and blurbs about famous people, interesting places in the state, state history, state symbols and icons, and so much more.
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As I mentioned above, notebooking is a very engaging way to learn. Sonlight's notebooking pages are for learning about a state. They don't just include pages for basic stats and state icons (bird, flag, etc.). They also provide pages for making a timeline, highlighting events from history, and teaching about people, traditions, and recipes (!) from the state. There is so much we can learn about Illinois.
The notebooking pages are not the only resource available in the Sonlight 50 States Unit Study. There are also detailed teacher pages giving suggestions on when to do various pages, how to research and write a historical account from the state history, and otherwise ideas for improving our unit study experience. The teacher guide pages suggest doing one of the activities each week for 36 weeks.
Our Experience with the 50 States Unit Study
We approached the Sonlight 50 States Unit Study differently than the teacher guide suggested, and the guide turned out to be flexible for our adaptation! Rather than spread the study out a little each week, we decided to focus on this unit study for a few days at a time to learn the material. Some of the activities named were shorter (such as learning about an animal) and others were longer (such as writing a one-page description of a historical event, which required research).
As can also be inferred from that, I found some of the activities were more appropriate for my youngest (such as naming an animal and drawing the pictures) while others were more appropriate for my middle schooler (such as writing about the historical event). I loved that we can include the whole family in this study. The large-format picture book also has so many details about other states that, while we probably won't do such a long unit study for other states, we can at least cover the basics facts and a few interesting features of a few other states, such as the states where grandparents live.
How You Can Use the States Unit Study
Would you like to do your own study? The Sonlight 50 States Unit Study is very flexible. It provides a guided program for completing the notebooking pages a little each week for a school year, or you can use the outline to do it in your own time frame (like we did). The bright and engaging picture book has information about all the states, and the blank notebooking pages allow you to use any state as the subject of your study.
If you are interested in the Sonlight 50 States Unit Study, you can get your own copy at the Sonlight site.
