Day 51: More Cool Ideas

We've been working on some projects in class.  Last week we read the story Owl Moon and compared it with a story called Owls.  As part of a fact-finding assessment, I had the children find 10 facts about owls in the selection and create a poster.  They turned out pretty neat.

An owl fact poster.

We have also been working on our Weather unit in science.  As part of our study on clouds, we created cloud flap books.  Each book highlights four types of clouds: stratus, cumulus, cirrus, and cumulonimbus.  The students were given a packet of cloud information to read through.  After reading through, they wrote down two facts they learned about clouds under each flap.




This is the cover of the book. We used cotton balls to create the clouds.  The children thought this was great fun.

 

This is the inside of the book.  Two facts are listed for each type of cloud.

 Another project we started this week to go along with Thanksgiving is reading the Pilgrim children set.  (A colleague has been using this project for quite a number of years and passed it on to me when I joined the team four years ago.)  I use the set as a "work smarter, not harder" project.  The books are read during Language Arts, but can be combined into Social Studies for a thematic unit.  I spend two days one one book, two days on the other, and about two to three days on a writing workshop project.

I have the Samuel Eaton book and the Sarah Morton book.  (I plan to get the Tapenum book to use in the future.)  What I currently have the children listen for is: how the children dressed, what chores they had to do, and what they did in their free time.  (We do this in a four-square.)  We then use the four-square to create a writing piece where the children write what their lives would be like if they were a Pilgrim child.  The boys write about the boy's life and the girls write about the girl's life. 

The children really enjoy learning about what life was like several hundred years ago.  They have a lot of questions and we have some lively discussions about the two books, especially when I remind the children that there were no electronics (and therefore, no TV or video games) back then!

I hope you can use some of these ideas for your classrooms.  If you try any out, leave a note and let me know how they turned out.  I can't wait to see them!