Postcard-Geography Album: Delaware, "The First State"

This week's postcard geography I left as a mystery for them to figure out.
I gave one of my students a worksheet with the clue "What state is called the First State?" and he had to decode the answer to find out the state we were studying this week. To decode it he had to answer questions such as "Put an A as the second letter of the word if 31,842 rounded to the nearest thousand is 31,000." or "Put an L as the third letter if 677 rounded to the nearest hundred is 600."
He figured out in a few minutes that our state for this week is Delaware...
"The First State."
We are very familiar with this state since we live just over the border in Maryland. We go to Delaware for our grocery shopping, our doctors, for field trips, to see the Ocean...for all sorts of things. We are more familiar with Delaware than some parts of our own state.
This postcard tells a lot about the state. At the top-left is the capital building, the Delaware Legislative Hall; then there is the Fenwick Island lighthouse. There are quite a few lighthouses along the Delaware coast. There is the Blue Hen, which is the state bird and the mascot of the University of Delaware. Next is the Delaware Beaches, which is where we like to go when we go to the Ocean. The ship on the bottom right is the Cape May-Lewes Ferry. The ship on the bottom left is the Kalmar Nyckel, ship that brought settlers to New Sweden. Going up along the left-hand side of the card, there is a plane to represent Dover Air Force Base. Then there are peach blossoms, the state flower. The last picture is a statue of Ceasar Rodney on horseback. This figure is also on the Delaware State Quarter. Rodney was in Dover attending to Loyalist activity in Sussex County when he received word from Thomas McKean that he and George Read were deadlocked on the vote for independence. To break that deadlock, Rodney rode eighty miles through a thunderstorm on the night of July 1, 1776, dramatically arriving in Philadelphia "in his boots and spurs" on July 2, just as the voting was beginning. He voted with McKean and thereby allowed Delaware to join eleven other states in voting in favor of the resolution of independence. (source: wikepedia)
A student colored and compiled the scrapbook page.

An older student drew a map of his own.

We read books.
  And since peach pie is the official state dessert, a fresh peach pie is a perfect treat.
Middletown Delaware (where we buy our groceries) holds a Peach Festival the third week in August every year. Another possibility along those same lines for a dinner is Peach and Bourbon Glazed Roast Chicken

Pumpkin bread would also be a good choice for a food for Delaware.

Delaware is also home of the "World Championship Punkin Chunkin Contest" in which contestants try to throw a pumpkin the farthest, so a food with pumpkins would also be a good food to represent this state.
Or, you could have your own mock Punkin' Chukin' contest with pom pom pumpkins and homemade catapults and trebuchets, instructions at Almost Unschoolers.

Other food possibilities are: Succotash and Milk (official state beverage)

We have visited 23 states and Washington DC.
We still need postcards for these states, if you would like to help us with this project:
Mississippi, New Jersey, Vermont,Wyoming

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