Taking a trip out west could be very exciting.  We did not actually go west, but we prepared to make a pretend trip.  We drove to Grandma’s house and looked in her encyclopedia to learn about the west. In particular, we studied Montana.  We learned about the railroad, the cowboys, and mining.

We set a particular night aside for our “Trip Out West.”  Each of us dressed up in costume to represent some occupation we learned about in our study.  We ate a cowboy supper of jerky, hard tack, and hash.

We topped the evening off with movies we got from the library. (These were real movies, I had to check out a projector, too.)  Nowadays, videos and DVDs make a project like this a lot easier.  One movie we saw was about Montana.  The other showed us mountain climbing. We had a fun time.

There, now you have an idea of what we did.  You can put on your thinking cap and pick a state or other destination your family might like to study.  How about Hawaii?  You could make grass skirts and leis out of streamers, eat a real fresh pineapple and real coconut and learn about sugar cane.  Check out some movies at your library and see the beautiful scenery.  Aloha!