Saturday, September 6, 2008

Terrific Texas

We had fun studying about Texas while Terry and Sharyl (Ken's parents) were out here visiting. We had them join in on the fun. We carefully choose a Texas watermelon to buy that week. Earlier in the summer we had seen a bunch of them for sale and decided we would need to get one the week we were studying Texas. However on Texas week I think this watermelon was the only one in the store with this sticker.





Texas was a fun one to study partly because my boys had so been looking forward to it. As they have been learning the names of the states that one was one of the first ones that they were able to pick out on the map and when we were playing games they always wanted to go there even if it didn't help there game strategy. Aaron is dreaming of moving there when he gets bigger. I am not sure exactly what made them so fascinated with it but I think it is the fact that it is so big (On our map it is the biggest state though we have explained that Alaska is bigger.)






  • Texas is the 28th state becoming one on Dec. 29, 1845.

  • The State flower is the Bluebonnet. The pictures of them were so pretty, I would love to visit when they are blooming some time.

  • The State tree is the Pecan (Yummy!).

  • The State bird is the Mockingbird.

  • You could fit 220 Rhode Islands into Texas. The state stretches around 800 miles each way.


When I think about Texas foods I think about Tex-Mex and steaks. We didn't end up having steak but we did find some other Texas foods to try.



Above is our Galveston Chicken and Texas potato chunks.



Below is our San Antonio Tortilla. Those 3 recipes came from a neat cookbook that my mom gave me that is called "Around the World in 350 recipes"

I also made a very yummy Blueberry Streusel Cake (which I forgot to take a picture of).
And we all enjoyed Caliente Tamale Pie.

We did a fair amount of reading about Texas and enjoyed reading about the Alamo, the Longhorn Steers, Rodeos and then I had fun telling them about when I visited the state and went to Johnson Space Center in Houston.

One day we had fun dressing up like "Cowboys and Cowgirls". I am very blessed with a very game Mother-in-law as she quite willingly participated even when we all wore them to the church softball game. By the time we got our picture taken we had misplaced a couple of hats which is why mine isn't really cowboy style and Megan doesn't have one.

Okay, so what did I miss? What is the neatest part about Texas to you?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love this, because I live in Texas. :) My youngest daughter is 7th generation Texan on my husband's side of the family (the older two were born when we were military). You'll have to email me those recipies if you don't mind. (homemakerhero@gmail.com)

As for anything else, we also have the gulf of Mexico here which means lots of beaches! :) You might also teach something about hurricanes as we not only experience tornados, but also hurricanes. There's even a "hurricane season". :)

Good job remembering to talk about the Space Center. Oh and in addition to the cowboys, there were also big indian tribes.

One place of interest you might look up is the King Ranch. It's in the town where I live. King Ranch was responsible for the breeding of the first Santa Gertrudis breed of cattle – the first officially recognized new breed of beef cattle in America. (http://www.king-ranch.com/index.html) There's a lot of hunting going on there now and even the Vice President of the US came out to hunt a couple of months ago. A novelty note is that there is even a King Ranch edition of the Ford Super Duty truck. ;)

Anonymous said...

Please don't leave out west Texas -it is so odd looking with black "trees" that move up and down, make a constant humming noise, and bring black gold up from the earth. There are thousands of them (I don't know an official number) and, seriously, they were the only trees my mother-in-law ever really knew until she moved to MO. I personally think west Texas is kind of like Mars - just inhabited by friendly people with CRAZY accents!

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