Student Blogging Challenge & NatGeo's Giant Map of North America

This is the first week of the Student Blogging Challenge. 

One of the tasks is to introduce yourself to the other bloggers participating in the challenge. 

As luck would have it, it is also the week our school rolled out our National Geographic's Giant Map of North America! Let's use the giant map to tell you about ourselves! 

Order your own Giant Map here. 

Here are some geographic facts about 

Mrs. Yollis' third-grade students.

1. We live on the CONTINENT of North America.

2. Our COUNTRY is the United States of America.

3. Out of the fifty STATES, we live in California.

4. We live in a SUBURB of Los Angeles. 

Did you know that North America is the third-largest continent? 

It is! Asia is the largest, then Africa, and then North America.

North America is more than 9, 300, 000 square miles (24, 100, 000 square kilometers). North America is made up of 23 countries, and the largest ones are Canada, the United States, and Mexico. 

We live in the United States. 

According to Countries of the World, 

here are North America's 23 countries. 

The giant map is just that...GIANT! We took off our shoes and walked around and explored our continent! Let's tell you about North America!

Photo by Mrs. Yollis 

Ivy and Julia: There are two major mountain ranges in North America, the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians. The Rocky Mountains are in the west and are bigger. We represented the Rocky Mountains with red cones. The "Rockies" extend from western Canada down to the state of New Mexico. The highest peak in the Rockies is Mount Elbert in Colorado. The Appalachians are in the eastern United States, and we represented them with yellow cones.

Photo by Mrs. Yollis 

Emily F., Tali, Elijah: We used blue chains to follow the flow of rivers. Rivers follow gravity and flow downhill. The often flow out to large bodies of water. 

Cade and Evan: The blue cones show where the river starts (headwaters) and where the river ends (mouth or another river.) 

We used Britannica, classroom maps, and an atlas (a book of maps) to gather facts about North America and our country, the United States. 

Emily E. and Mia: We live in a suburb (a community outside of a city) of Los Angeles, so we are very close to the Pacific Ocean. In fact, we could drive to the beach in about 30 minutes. To the east of North America is the Atlantic Ocean. It would take us about 42 hours to drive to the Atlantic Ocean from where we live.

Eden and Emma: Did you know that there are 24 time zones. The earth spins around every 24 hours. We are in the Pacific Time Zone. 

Mr. and Mrs. Yollis visited the Grand Canyon during winter.
This photo was taken in December.

Daniel: The Grand Canyon is found in the United States in Arizona. There are bobcats, rabbits, squirrels, and chipmunks who live in the Grand Canyon. Many tourists visit the Grand Canyon every year. 

Diagram by Aashi

Ivy, Archie, and Ben: The Great Lakes are very large and they are found between the United States and Canada. They are freshwater, not saltwater, and take up the largest area of freshwater in the world.  To remember the Great Lakes, think HOMES: Lake Huron, Lake Ontario, Lake Michigan, Lake Erie, Lake Superior. 

A geyser in Yellowstone National Park. (Photo by Mrs. Yollis)

Emily F.: Yellowstone National Park is in Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho. There you can see Old Faithful and other geysers!

Isla: Central America is also part of North America. It is in the southern part of North America. The Central American countries are: Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. 

Kevin, Tali, and Kasra: Canada is the country exactly north of the United States. The national capital of Canada is Ottawa. Canada is the second-largest country in the world. 

Sammy: The United States has mountains, prairies, rain forests, and deserts. We are the fourth largest country in the world. 

Paul: North America has a population of more than 490 million people! 

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Tell us about you! What's your continent, country, state/province, and city?

Do you have any questions for us? We are happy to research and comment back to you!

Skyping With Canadians!

Today, we Skyped with Mrs. Watson's class in British Columbia! They are our blogging buddies in Canada. We first met each other when we were members of the Our World, Our Stories global project last October.

Geographers, Kelly and Sarah, locate and point to Solintula, British Columbia.

 Canada's Minister of Education was a guest in Mrs. Watson's room, and we thought he must work in the national capital of Canada which is Ottawa.

We opened the call with our American greeters. 

Our Canadian greeters were so professional!

For fun, we each sang our verse from the Our World, Our Stories culminating song. Here is the original sing along!

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Even thought we had some technical problems with Skype, the two classes persevered and were able to learn a lot about our two countries. 

~AREA~

Mia shared that America has 3,794,101 square miles, while Sophie informed us that Canada measures 3, 855,100 square miles. 

Very close, but how much larger is Canada's area? Is Canada the largest country in the world?

~POPULATION~

There are a lot of Americans! Trey stated that there are approximately 313,000,000 people in the U.S. According to Karin, there are 34,108,752 Canadians!

Not very close! How many more Americans are there than Canadians? 

 ~NATIONAL BORDERS~

Parsa informed our Canadian friends that America is divided up into 50 states.  

Quang shared that Canada is divided up too, but their divisions are not called states. Canada has TEN provinces and THREE territories.

~FLAGS~

Leila drew the flag and discussed what the symbols on the American flag stand for.

Ana shared that Canada's colors/colours are red and white and the national emblem is the maple leaf. 

~NATIONAL ANIMALS~

 The bald eagle is America's national bird. The female is larger and the wingspan is enormous! Madison used two yard sticks (similar to two meter sticks) to demonstrate the wingspan!

Canada's national animals are the industrious beaver and the Canadian horse. Kennedy said that the horse was just added in 2002. 

~FUN FACTS~

It is interesting that the highest and lowest points in North America are in the United States. Matthew and Aidan put these facts together.

Although Death Valley doesn't sound inviting, it is quite beautiful!

Canadian fun fact:  Canadians eat more Mac and Cheese than any other country on Earth! 

We loved this fact! However, considering America's enormous population and love of Mac and Cheese, we find this fact hard to believe!

Thank you, Royce, for being our class photographer!

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What did you think of the Skype call?

Do you have any questions for the Canadians?

Please share your opinion with the Minister of Education, Mr. Abbott. Why you think blogging is important?

Blogging Challenge #3

The third assignment in the
Challenge Yourself to Blog series 
is to tell a little about where you live.
The place where Mrs. Yollis' students live can be describe in many ways!

City:  Los Angeles

State:  California

Country:  United States

Continent:  North America

Here is a movie Mrs. Yollis' class made about their continent!

Did you learn anything new about North America?

Video: Mrs. Yollis' Class Visits North America!

National Geographic has a wonderful educational program called the Giant Traveling Maps.

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Ingrid Hanzer, a member of National Geographic's Grosvenor Council, sponsored the map for the school. She spoke to Mrs. Yollis' class about the importance of learning about geography.

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The students had opportunities to explore the giant map of North America.

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They used cones to create mountain ranges and blue plastic chains to trace the path of important rivers.

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They visited the map several times and were able to film their experiences!

Enjoy!

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Last year, Mrs. Yollis visited Asia!



What do you think of North America?

Did you learn anything new?