Today we reviewed Christopher Columbus by reading the book Columbus Day by Christina Mia Gardeski. We discussed the information about his journey. We completed a flip book activity for Danny’s interactive notebook in which we colored and applied the three ships from Columbus’ journey into his book. Under each ship we wrote a fact Danny had learned about Columbus. These facts included: that Columbus was an explorer, he found a way to a new land, and he sailed with three ships. We also reviewed the concept of history as we discussed in our Florida Studies Weekly yesterday. We were reminded of ways we can learn about history and Danny completed a follow up activity in which he completed a sentence that he could use books to learn about history. We are working on gaining the understanding that history is important to tell us about how people lived in the past. In further exploring the past, we began reading the second book in the Magic Tree House series, The Knight at Dawn, by Mary Pope Osborne. We read chapters 1 and 2 and Danny wrote responses to follow up comprehension questions after each chapter. In the start of this historical fiction novel, Young Jack and Annie reflect on their unbelievable journey in a magical tree house to the time of the dinosaurs. They sneak back to the tree house just before dawn and point to a picture of a castle. After the tree house begins to spin and spin, they find themselves in a different tree, staring at a castle. We will examine castles and knights for our historical research.