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Booking Across the USA- Illinois and a GIVEAWAY #1

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Illinois Picture Book and Activity

Welcome to the Booking Across the USA collaborative blogging project.  Over 50 bloggers have teamed up to showcase a book and activity from every state in America.  I’m excited to share about the great state of Illinois!  For a complete list of bloggers representing the other states, please click here.

Illinois Book:  Pizza Pie In The Sky:  A Story About Illinois

The book I chose to feature is Pizza Pie In The Sky: A Story About Illinois by Karen Latchana Kenney.  This a fact and fable book about a Monarch butterfly (IL state insect) who is trying to find her way south to catch up with the other migrating butterflies.  During her journey, she travels across the state of Illinois learning lots of facts about the state.  On the sidebar of each page, you will find a photograph and factual information about important landmarks and symbols of the state.  A comprehension check is included at the end of the story.  You will also find a suggested list of places to visit and a glossary to support readers.

This story would be at the interest level of  K-4th grade students and appropriate for 3rd grade readers.

Pizza Pie In the Sky:  A Story About Illinois was my first introduction to the ABDO Publishing Company and the Super Sandcastle State Stories series.  You will find fact and fable stories about many other states including : New York, Alabama, Alaska, California, Georgia, Missouri and more!

Literacy Activity:  Illinois Board Game

After reading the story, I had the idea of creating an Illinois game board to review the facts in the story plus a few more fun tidbits about the state.  This game board idea could easily be adapted for any state you are studying.

state board game

Materials Needed:

 1/2 piece of foam board, piece of cardboard or blank game board (I like these from Bare Books.)

an outline of the state of Illinois or you could free-hand your own

markers or crayons

scissors

2 pennies (Abraham Lincoln lived in IL and is on the head of a penny!)

1 die

6 index cards

Glue or draw an outline of the state in the middle of your board.  Around the state, draw your playing path.  Try to get at least 25 spaces.  Mark 4-6 spaces with special directions such as “move ahead 1 space” or “go back to start”.  Cut your index cards in half and write an “Illinois Game Cards” statement on each card.

You are ready to play!  Place one penny heads up and one tails up on the “START” space.  Each player rolls the die and moves their playing piece accordingly.  A card is picked and read each turn.  First player to make it around the board wins.

For a deeper learning experience, have your child design their own board and questions!

Now, let’s move on to that fabulous giveaway opportunity!

GIVEAWAY OPPORTUNITY

We are very excited to offer a GIVEAWAY today to go along with the Booking Across the USA project.  Little Passports is a super fun way for your child to learn about the USA. It’s recommended for ages 7-12.  Every month, Sam and Sofia travel to two new states.  In the mail each month, your child will receive a package of learning adventures and games.  Little Passports offers different subscription packages based on your needs.  They even have a world passport collection too.  Little Passports has graciously agreed to give a 3-month subscription of the USA Little Passports to one lucky Growing Book by Book reader!

GIVEAWAY GUIDELINES

To enter the giveaway for a 3-month subscription of the USA Little Passports you will need to either “Like” Little Passports on Facebook OR sign up for The Little Passports Newsletter.  After you have done either one of these, simply leave a comment on this post telling us which one you did.  That’s it!  You have until 3/3/13 at 9:00p.m. (CST) to enter.  One entrant (must be 18 years or older) will be randomly drawn and announced on Growing Book By Book the week of 3/3/13.  The winner will also receive an email and has 48 hours to respond with a mailing address.  If the information is not sent by the deadline, another entrant will be selected.  Good luck!

Don’t forget to visit the other participating bloggers in the Booking Across the USA project.  You may also be interested in my Booking Across the USA Pinterest page.

Thanks for reading!  I would love for you to subscribe to our RSS Feed, like us on Facebook or follow us on Pinterest.

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About Jodie Rodriguez

Jodie Rodriguez is a mom of two young boys and an early childhood/elementary educator with over 20 years of experience. Jodie's passion is helping parents, teachers, librarians and anyone else interested in nurturing and reaching ALL of our youngest growing readers.

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  25. Mrs. J says

    So sad to see that DC was left out of your booking across the USA! Especially sad since it is the capitol of our country 🙁 I know we are a district and not technically a state, but we’re still an important and interesting place!

    Loved the booking across America though and enjoyed going to and learning about each state.

    Mrs. J

    Reply

  51. Stacy says

    I liked them on Facebook! I found Booking Across the USA through Pinterest and I’m so glad I did – can’t wait for my daughter to do state projects at school now!

    Reply

  55. Kerry Aradhya says

    Hi, Jodie! Your game is adorable. Looks like you put a lot of effort into it! I’m not going to enter the giveaway, but my daughters both received a three-month subscription to Little Passports over the holidays (one to the USA edition and one to the international edition). It’s a fantastic product!

    Reply

  57. Kristina @ SchoolTimeSnippets says

    I will definitely look out for that book at our library! Sounds like such a cute learning resource!!

    Reply

  58. CountryFun ChildCare (@CountryFunCC) says

    Jodie, Thank you for pulling this all together. We may not get to all the states this year, but the resources this event is providing is wonderful. thinking your book will be good to pull when we do our year monarch study. Developing an understanding of home/town/state/country is helped when there is a common interest point.

    Reply

Trackbacks

  7. […] Booking Across the USA is a collaborative blogging project created by Jodie from Growing Book By Book.  Each of the participating bloggers are showcasing a book and activity related to their state:  all 50 states are represented!!! Children’s literature is a fun way to bring history, culture, and geography alive and to learn about the US through “armchair travel.” The book I’ve chosen to represent Texas is Tomie dePaola’s “The Legend of the Bluebonnet.” […]

    Reply