North America Geography

All right, congratulations. You have made it through your very first unit of social studies, and we are now actually going to start talking about places. The first place we're going to start talking about is North America, which if you remember from one of the very first days, is the continent on which we live. So North America, there we go. Here it is. Here's North America, right? Canada? The United States and Mexico. That makes up North America. You'll notice that up in the upper left hand corner. There's also a little thing called the United States up there. That's Alaska. So technically we are both south and north of Alaska. But the area in the middle is typically what we think of as the United States called the continental United States. But the United States Canada and Mexico, you'll notice there are these areas down here. That are technically part of North America, the continent, but the region of the world we call it Central America and the Caribbean. So we're actually not going to talk about those right now. We're really going to focus on Canada, United States, and Mexico. As North America, that will star right there that just popped up. That's where we live. Gulf Coast of Texas here in Pasadena. So we have this map. And the next thing we need to talk about is north southeast and west. So here's our compass rose. It should be in the corner of every map somewhere. And so this is how we know what's north, east, south, and west. You may have heard things like never eat soggy waffles. Never eat sour watermelon. Northeast southwest. That's how you know which one is which, okay? So we're gonna put that back over in the corner. And here we have it. So let's talk about some things that are around North America. First, on the West Coast, you have the Pacific Ocean. The West Coast, you have the Pacific Ocean on the east coast, is the Atlantic Ocean. And down here by us, of course, you have the Gulf of Mexico. It's a gulf is next to Mexico. So it's the Gulf of Mexico. When you go to Galveston and go to the beach, you are swimming in the Gulf of Mexico. So in the United States, we're really going to focus on the United States right now and talk about some of the landforms we have. Remember landforms is exactly what it sounds like, how the land is formed. So mountains, peninsulas, isthmus, archipelago, lakes, oceans, rivers, all that kind of stuff, landforms. The first set of landforms that we are going to talk about here in the United States. Oh, is way over here in the west, way over in the west so far off, it's not even on this map to start with is Hawaii. So I hope you're looking west that's the left side if you're not sure which one is less. Hawaii is an archipelago. It is one of the last states admitted to the union. But archipelago remember is a chain of islands. So Hawaii is beautiful. But as an island chain over in the Pacific Ocean, archipelago Hawaii is an archipelago. We also have Florida, which is a Peninsula. Remember, it's a Peninsula because it has water on one, two, three sides. Florida is a Peninsula because it has water on one, two, three sides. So Florida, Peninsula. Okay, next up, we have a mountain range in the eastern United States. Remember northeast southwest. So in the eastern United States, is the Appalachian mountain range. Okay, remember we said Appalachian Mountains or any mountains are a transportation barrier. They make it harder to travel. So for a long time, not many people in the United States lived west of the Appalachian Mountains. I mean, they were uncovered wagons. Did you really want to go across some mountains and covered wagon? No, it's hard. So they would just stay to the east. So in the east, we have the Appalachian Mountains. And then way over in the western United States, we have the Rocky Mountains. So that's going to be Denver. The states comes almost all the way down into Texas and you've got New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, all the way, Rocky Mountains run up all the way into Canada. Those are another transportation barrier. People got between the mountains and then it took even longer to go west of the Rocky Mountains because again, when you're in a covered wagon, it's hard to go over the mountains. So the Rocky Mountains are out there, that's where you're going to have a lot of skiing, snow in the mountains, snowboarding, all that kind of stuff out in the Rocky Mountains. So those are some of the things we have. We also have the Mississippi River. We know that rivers are transportation corridors. So people could get their boat in the Mississippi River somewhere up north and make it all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico through the Mississippi River. So that's the Mississippi River, huge huge river, huge transportation corridor, especially people shipping things by boat. And then the last thing we have is the Great Lakes, Great Lakes, you'll notice are on the border between Canada and the United States. But they're exactly what they sound like. They are Great Lakes. They are huge lakes. This is like Michigan with Chicago sitting in the background. Chicago is on the shore of the Great Lakes. But the Great Lakes is one of our major landforms in the United States. So let's go over them one more time. You have the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Hawaii, out west, is an archipelago. Florida is a Peninsula, water on three sides. You have the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean. The Appalachian Mountains, and the Rocky Mountains, the Mississippi River, and the Great Lakes, okay? So those are going to be, I mean, I know it's about ten things, but those are going to be our major landforms for North America. Obviously, they're more lakes. There's more rivers. They're more mountains, all this kind of things. But these are the major ones that we're going to focus on for the United States and North America.