50 State Study: New York

I was going to write about when we studied New York in high school where we did our quick blitz of a geography lesson as we ran through United States Geography, and I realized I had written about this way back when the kids were tiny all the way back in 2011, so as I rewrote the post and updated all this it gave me a chance to see what I did originally and be like, “Wow we did all sorts of cool stuff back in the day.” Find those ancient pictures and make them not quite so tiny (hopefully) and generally make it more useful. So, guess what, folks? You get two geography lessons for the price of one. But since the price is free, it’s an amazing deal.

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Now, back to 2011 Ticia

This is one of those states that I know we spent several weeks on, but there wasn’t much that was bloggable about it. And yes, bloggable is a word.

2025 Ticia interrupts to share what books we read:

New York books

new york picture books for kids geography booklist

I need to do a quick search and import that booklist because I do not want that to be a completely separate post anymore. Give me one moment to dig that up (Ticia disappears to do a quick search, picture frantic typing).

What to Do About Alice!– I absolutely loved the vocabulary in this book, and the spunkiness of Alice. Because there wasn’t anything too exciting to do for a project here, and her Dad created the national parks, we designed our dream parks. Which in the case of Princess and Superman, means lots of flowers and awesome playgrounds.
Emma’s journey– This was checked out, but the little I saw online looks good
Here Comes the Garbage Barge– a humorous look at all the garbage we create, and what happens to it
Subway– the bright and simple pictures are so fun
Now That’s Big! Empire State Building– This is a fun series of books
Steel Pan Man of Harlem– A fun take on the Pied Piper story
Underground Gator– A funny take on what might be under the subway
When You Meet a Bear on Broadway– Super cute
Pale Male: Citizen Hawk of New York City– this was checked out of the library, and I’m hoping it’s there when we study New York again
Building Manhattan– It’s kind of like the Street through Time book and I super love it
Tenth Avenue Cowboy– This is one of the few books from New York that I’ve got an updated post for, and I super love this book, and the idea in it.
Liberty Rising: The Story of the Statue of Liberty– This inspired some fun math and measuring activities
Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue– I love Gershwin, so this book makes me happy. It also became an excuse to watch Fantasia 2000.
Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera– This led to such a fun writing project
Teedie: The Story of Young Teddy Roosevelt– I’m a sucker for stories of the presidents as kids
Amelia and Eleanor Go For a Ride– I actually found about 10 books on the Roosevelt family, it could be the subject of a post all by itself
The Babe and I– For some reason, this book reminds me of the Mean Joe Green commercial, for no good reason

Okay, that was all of the books we read. Now let me find some what video we watched when we did this in high school…

I took D4 psychic damage as I heard the “Oh Wow” as the video started.

Finding resources has gotten so much worse with the advent of AI-generated videos.

SO MUCH WORSE, there are so many bad videos I now have to sort through.

The psychic damage as I listen to those horrible voices.

I now give you the improvement of the Nat Geo kids rapping birds.

I’m so glad I got most of my research for my history lessons done before the advent of AI, because I would not want to have that going on right now with AI “helping that search.

Okay, now I’m looking for good sites for facts, I guess I’m just feeling salty because I’m having a harder time finding good sites and it’s the state of New York. It should be EASY to find 50 good resources, and unfortunately, the sites coming up at the top of the search are all stupid AI bad materials that are just stupid.

So, I’m only going to give you Encyclopedia Britannica. That’s it. I wish I could point you to some more interesting ideas, but it’s a busy week, and I’m feeling annoyed at the degeneration of my resources as they all run headlong off a cliff into a lesser resource.

Excuse me as I go shake my cane at some kids and tell them to get off my lawn or some such.

Original New York Lapbooks

So…… let’s see what’s in their books:

New York lapbooking pages for young kids

Norman Rockwell– on the inside is the story written by that kid. My kids only wrote one sentence, but for older guys, you could challenge them to come up with more.
Building New York– one of the non-bloggable activities. We read the book, and then put the timeline of activities in order from the page at the back of the book. I liked this one because it does a great job of providing a nice timeline activity to look at.

Under New York City, New York state unit study

Under New York*- a great story about what is happening underground. I learned some great things from reading it, and was very amused by it. After reading, the kids got a piece of paper with a picture of the New York skyline on the front, and they lifted it open and inside they drew what they thought of under New York……. As you can imagine,e they each had different ideas of what to draw. Princess had to draw something “pretty.” That’s her new obsession: drawing pretty stuff.

New York Unit geography kindergarten 1st 12th 50 state study

The boys latched onto something different. You know that rumored to be there… alligators.

Tenth Avenue Cowboy– A wonderful story about a boy who dreams of being a cowboy, and how his dream comes true. Everyone wrote about how their dream came true, but most of the kids wrote rather silly answers.
My Ideal Park– we tied this into “What to do About Alice,” but it’s not supremely related. Teddy Roosevelt founded our national parks, and so we talked about that a lot.
Franklin Roosevelt and Teddy Roosevelt pages- These are just a simple 2-flap book with their images glued on top. If the boy from the book pictured above had written smaller, he would only have one book with something written about each of those presidents written under the flap. But…. he’s six, and has rather messy handwriting.
Statue of Liberty– We measured it out and saw the relative sizes… link to the printable is there as well as a link to the site that had the measurements.
New York State Symbols- this can be found on my Subscriber page if you JOIN MY NEWSLETTER

High School New York Unit

We did this way back when we were in our rush to study as much as we could and get as much studying done at once. So we didn’t do anything extra, and I realized at this point my kids really didn’t care about the extra stuff, so there are no minibooks or any of that stuff.

But, let’s talk about what I pulled out for my fun facts.

New York City is the most populous city in the United States.
It’s founded by Peter Minuet, a man I know very little about.
It the the 3rd most populous state, but that was before the 2020 census, so I wonder what would be said now.