Southwest States Week 1

Do you know the Bible has many references in it about the desert? The two main stories that may come to mind is Moses and the Israelites wandering in the desert after fleeing the Egyptians and Jesus' 40 days in the desert. The desert offers beauty, solitude, challenges and many obstacles just to name a few. The desert is an amazing habitat created by God and we learned some interesting things about it ....

The first thing I did with my kids was to find out what they already knew about a desert. Since we live in California they have as the privilege of being able to drive through a desert. Now when we learned about swamp life that was a bit of a stretch of the imagination. (One of these years we will make it to the south.)

Next, I taught them the trick on how to spell desert. I told them the years in school that I would improperly spell desert with two "SS" instead of one. We all had a laugh.

One thing I never realized that there are so many varieties of cactus'. We learned bout the animals that live in them and around them. How to get water from them if you are ever stranded in a desert. I had them make a model of one out of cardboard. I had precut the pieces. They painted and added the spikes or spines on them. Then they made desert animals out of modeling clay. We will have to paint them next week, after they harden up more.

They also made a sand art desert animal and colored a picture of the Grand Canyon.

Here is a list of books that we read this week on the Southwest...

-Desert Animals at Night by Lynn Stone

- A Walk in the Desert by Caroline Arnold

- The Seed and the Giant Saguaro by Jennifer Ward

- Cactus in the Desert by Phyllis Busch

- Around one Cactus by Anthiny Fredericks

- Welcome to the USA Arizona by Ann Heinrichs

- Meet Josefina: An American Girl by Valerie Trip