We began our preparations for South Dakota by reading Explore the Grasslands by Kay Jackson. While the photographs were beautiful, the writing was a bit too poetic for my first and third graders and they quickly lost interest. In fact, through most of the book, Matthew was standing on his head, running over to pet the dog, and generally trying to start side conversations.
The book is broken out into several, very short chapters, and rather than read the entire book from start to finish, as I did, I would suggest reading it one chapter at a time and then expanding on that chapter with other books or activities.
The book begins with a discussion of what biomes are and then describes the different types of grasslands. What I would like to do is revisit this chapter and use it as a starting off point to go deeper into a comparision between prairies and savannas, and then learn to classify South Dakota's grasslands.
The kids were both super psyched to hear that they may see prairie dogs on our trip (I mean, jumping on the couch pscyhed) so I believe we will review the wildlife chapter and go deeper into the wildlife of South Dakota.
To wrap up, this book is interesting and beautiful to look at, but in regards to preparing for a trip to South Dakota, it really can only be used as a starting point, and should only be read one chapter at a time. All in all, not absolutely necessary to your preparations.
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