Postcard-Geography Album: Maine, “The Pine Tree State”

For this week's postcard-geography album page, we recieved a whole packet of goodies from Jesse at
Our Side of the Mountain.
She has a lovely blog in which she shares with us the homeschooling adventures with her 1st, 4th and 7th graders. I love reading her weekly wrap-ups!

Since she sent us all the materials to work with, we decided to flip through the brochures and pick out pictures to make a collage for our Maine scrapbook page. The postcard she sent in the packet has on it the map of Maine. We also colored in the state on our US map on the first page of our album.

When I asked Jesse about the representative foods for Maine, she said,

"B and M baked beans (in a can from the store which are MADE in Maine), red casing hot dogs (if you can stand the dye ICK! LOL) and brown bread (in a can), Needhams (potato, coconut and chocolate candies...sounds gross, but REALLY good), Whoopie Pies (our newest State Treat), New England Boiled Dinner (corned beef or ham shoulder with cabbage, potatoes, carrots, parsnips or turnips, depending on the recipe...but think there's a crockpot version). I think the Boiled Dinner with ham shoulder and Whoopie Pies are the easiest and yummiest. Use dark chocolate baking cocoa for the Whoopie Pies if you can find it and you can't skip the Marshmallow Fluff/Creme frosting. LOL Pennsylvania and Maine both claim to be the birthplace of the Whoopie pie. Low bush blueberries are also very popular. McIntosh apples. Pie? North Atlantic Crabmeat. Haddock or Cod. This Molasses Cookie Recipe has been in my family for GENERATIONS." -Jessy

We decided to make Whoopie Pies. Being fairly close to Pennsylvania and Amish country, we were familiar with them, but I had never made them before. I made chocolate with vanilla filling...

and Katie made gluten/casein-free vanilla ones with homemade marshmallow filling.
Both kinds were eaten up very quickly.

We also made the Soft Molassas Cookies. I didn't feel like rollling out cookies, so I just dropped them onto the cookie sheet by tablespoons and they turned out great. I also sprinkled on sugar sprinkles as well as the powdered sugar. These were so good and perfect for a Fall day with their spices.

And our reading during our Maine teatime.

"From the Penobscots, Passamaquoddies, Puritans and Pilgrims, to the proud people "Down East," "L is for Lobster" is the alphabet book for all Mainers. The ryhmes and text woven through A to Z teach children about the many wonders of this great vacationland. Maine, where "J" is for Jack-in-the-pulpit, M is for Moose, and N is for New England clam chowder."

We have "visited" 21 states (42%) and Washington DC in our postcard-geography album.
Create your own visited map of The United States

We are still looking for postcards from these states: Mississippi, New Jersey, Vermont, Wyoming. If you live in one of these states and would like to help us with this project, please leave a comment with how we can exchange addresses.