Students investigate Kentucky’s regions to answer how geography shapes jobs, daily life, and the use of natural resources across the state. Through Kentucky Region Quest Day, map work, museum artifacts, and weekly region-journal reflections, they build understanding of how landforms, rivers, and regional resources connect to people from early Kentucky history to today. The project helps students use maps, cardinal directions, and evidence from a local natural history museum to compare movement, work, and resource use in different places and time periods. Their learning culminates in a regional inquiry poster and showcase presentation that communicate how one Kentucky region influences the way people live and work.

Students will use Kentucky maps, cardinal directions, and map symbols to identify the state’s regions and locate major landforms, rivers, and important places. They will investigate how geography in one Kentucky region influences natural resources, jobs, and daily life by studying maps, fossils, artifacts, and examples from a local natural history museum. Students will compare how people, goods, and ideas moved in colonial Kentucky and modern Kentucky, and describe how technology changed that movement. They will explain how diverse groups of people contributed to Kentucky from European exploration through the colonial period and present their understanding in a clear regional inquiry poster, weekly journal reflections, and a final showcase presentation.

Students will create ongoing map sketches, artifact observation notes, and weekly entries in a class region journal to track how geography affects jobs, daily life, and natural resources in different parts of Kentucky. After Kentucky Region Quest Day, they will revise their work using sticky-note feedback to improve map accuracy, labels, and explanations. By the end, each student will produce a regional inquiry poster that includes a Kentucky map with cardinal directions and symbols, labeled landforms and rivers, and museum artifact images showing how one region shapes work, resources, and daily life. For Showcase Night, students will also prepare a simple artifact display and short presentation to share their findings with classmates, families, and museum staff.

Open with a “Kentucky Region Quest Day” where students rotate through hands-on stations with state maps, fossils, photos, and regional artifacts from a local natural history museum. At each station, they use cardinal directions, map symbols, and observation prompts to notice how landforms, rivers, and natural resources connect to jobs and daily life in different Kentucky regions. Students complete a quick gallery walk to leave sticky-note feedback on map accuracy, clear labels, and one question they still have about how a region affects work or daily life. Close by introducing the challenge to create a regional inquiry poster that uses maps, artifact images, and labeled examples to explain one region’s impact on natural resources, jobs, and daily life.

Host a Kentucky Region Showcase Night as a gallery walk where students present their regional inquiry posters and small artifact displays to classmates, families, and museum staff. Arrange the room by Kentucky regions so visitors can compare maps, labeled landforms and rivers, artifact images, and explanations of how geography affects jobs, daily life, and natural resources. Give guests a simple feedback card to note one thing they learned and one question for each presenter. Include a short opening in which students use cardinal directions and map symbols to help visitors navigate the exhibits.