Mississippi River Mini-Unit

We’re currently in the middle of our Westward Expansion unit study.   Since getting to the west meant crossing the Mississippi, I thought this would be a great time to do a mini-unit on the Mississippi River.

We studied the pathway and history of the Mississippi using the book Minn of the Mississippi as our guide.  (FYI, there is some evolution in the book, so you may need to skip some sections.)   Since Minn was a snapper turtle, we added turtles to our mini unit, learning about their life cycle and diet.  Isn’t this turtle puppet just too cute?

During our map work, we learned about geographical/river terms such as bayou, meander, levee, confurence and delta.  The girls labeled each of the states touched by the Mississippi, and also major rivers and tributaries.

We studied the water cycle using these cute printables from Kidzone.  

We created steam with our tea kettle, then held a frozen piece of plastic over the kettle to create condensation, and of course we used the 16 inches of snow that fell overnight to explain precipitation, grins.

Books we used:

Minn of the Mississippi; by Holling Clancy Holling
A Place for Turtles; by Melissa Stewart
Geography Fact Files, Rivers; by Many Ross
Land Shapes, Rivers: by Brian Knapp
Mississippi River, A Journey Down the Father of Waters; by Peter Lourie
Down a River; by Carole Telford
Mississippi; by Diane Siebert
The Mississippi America’s Mighty River; by Robin Johnson
The Mississippi River; by Allan Fowler
Exploring the Mississippi River Valley; by Rose Blue and Corinne J. Naden
The Mighty Mississippi, The Life and Times of America’s Greatest River; by Linda Vieira
Huckleberry Finn; by Mark Twain