Geography-Postcard Album-Nebraska, “Cornhusker State”

This next postcard comes from the Keesler Kids in Nebraska. They write,

"Nebraska has lots of corn! We grow so much we are known as the cornhusker state. I you look at a map of the USA, we are right in the middle."

Student completed album page.
The coloring page part of it is from United States Coloring Book.

In addition to corn, Nebraska is our nation's leading producer of beef cattle.

This led us to learning about the history of hamburgers.

Some of the books we used for our Nebraska study.

"The Tartars, roving horsemen who lived in Asia, were tough guys who ate raw meat. But all that chewing got old, and eventually the Tartars came up with a way to tenderize their meat -by tucking it under their saddles while the rode all over the great grasslands. By dinner time, the meat had been bumped and pounded to a tender pulp. All a Tartar had to do was remove it from his saddle, season his meat and voila! Tender tasty steak Tartar or Steak Tartare, a raw, seasoned ground beef which is still served in some fancy restaurants.

In the mid-1800's a trader from Hamburg, Germany, took the Tartar's way of tenderizing meat back to Germany where it became known as Hamburg steak. German settlers brought Hamburg steak to the United States. In 1904, at the World's Fair in St. Louis, Missouri, hamburger patties were broiled and served on buns, and for the first time, called hamburgers." -

American Grub

This made our choice of dinner for this state pretty easy -hamburgers and corn on the cob.

Another state dinner idea for Nebraska can be found at A Common Shepherdess
Grilled steaks
Baked potatoes
Corn salad
Kool-Aid (official state soft drink)
Sorghum Cookies

From our coloring page we also learned that the state bird is the Meadowlark,

the state tree is the Cottonwood

and the state flower is the Goldenrod.

 Nebraska gets its name from an American Indian word meaning "flat water" after the Platte River that flows through the state, "flat" is one meaning of the French word "platte."

picture from C is for Cornhusker

Nebraska's state quarter has a picture of an ox-drawn covered wagon and Chimney Rock rising from the valley of North Platte River. Many of the early pioneers passed through Nebraska and Kansas on their way toward California. The Nebraska Territory was formed in 1854 at the same time as the Kansas Territory. Chimney Rock, 445 feet tall, was named a National Historic Site in 1956.

in our album, we have visited 13 states (26%) and Washington DC