“Fifty Nifty United States,

From thirteen original colonies,

Fifty nifty stars in the flag,

That billow so beautifully in the breeze,

Each individual state contributes a quality that is great….”

This song has been stuck in my head for nearly a month now as we have been working on our Fifty States unit.  If you don’t know it, here’s a link to a Youtube video.  LINK   The third graders at our school have to memorize the fifty states and be able to locate them on the map and most of my students also challenged themselves to learn the state capitals!

The final culminating activity was that after doing a research project on a state, each student created a float for their state for our Second Annual Parade of States on Friday.  We have 48 students in our third grade, so we missed two states, but the parade was still pretty impressive and we challenged the observers to identify the two missing states!  The floats had several requirements, they had to: fit on the student’s desk top, roll down the hall pulled by a string, and be carried up the stairs.  On the float the students had a list of information that had to be displayed:  flag, capital, national parks, geographic features, and more.

No one in my class was allowed to choose Alaska, much to their chagrin, but since we spend so much time learning about Alaska, it wouldn’t really be fair. The Alaska challenge instead was left to Brenner who did an AMAZING job with his float. So amazing, that I absolutely promised him I’d share it with you all…

So with no further ado….here’s Brenner’s Alaskan Husky shaped state float!