As Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday approaches, we took some time to learn more about him. We first watched a Brain Pop Jr. video about his life. We learned that he was very smart, about the segregation that people faced during his time, he became a reverend, and he fought for equal rights. We discussed segregation in simple terms such as the separate water fountains they used and attending different schools. We cut and assembled a small booklet that reviewed facts about Martin Luther King Jr.
We also discussed landforms and bodies of water in our session today. We got an introduction from an educational video on Brain Pop Jr. We saw various landforms including hills, islands, mountains, valleys, and peninsulas. Danny scored a 4/5 on a modified follow-up easy quiz. We then worked on a booklet entitled, My Book of Landforms. Danny was presented with the words plain, valley, mountain, and hill. We went through each word and looked at the starting letter and the sound it makes. We then read the sentences on each page and used the pictures to help us determine which of those four words was needed to complete the sentence. We then worked to find the correct word from its starting sound. After filling in the blanks, we then reread the booklet. Finally, I gave Danny three pictures: an island, river, and desert. I described one of the pictures based on its features as a landform for Danny to try to choose the correct picture. After we found the correct picture, we then looked at pictures on the Internet to match the landform. Danny really liked the pictures of islands, especially one we found shaped like a hand!
Charlie and I discussed ideas for this month's school newspaper. He is contributing some jokes. We discussed civil rights and Martin Luther King Jr. and watched Dr. Seuss' "The Sneetches". We discussed new vocabulary. Afterwards, we reviewed what happened in history up to the point where we left off - after settling the West. We reviewed geography - latitude and longitude, cardinal directions, absolute and relative location, and place.
This afternoon, we read Snowmen at Work by Caralyn Buehner. In this book, it's revealed that snowmen don't just play all night--they have jobs to do, just like the parents of human kids. Dentists replace missing coal from snowman smiles while the pizza man delivers frozen pizza, and factory workers make the coolest toys in town! We talked about how these snowmen were working as community helpers but were only pretend, not real! I also used directional words to help give Danny information to find the hidden mouse on each page. We ended the day with a fun group activity. Danny watched a movie, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer with several other students. They enjoyed popcorn, too!
We began our Social Studies session with a fun physical group activity. Miss Dina led the children in a fun Hungry, Hungry Hippos game in which the children worked in teams to see who could collect the most balls from the center of the floor. One person rode on a wheeled body board and used a basket to pull a group of balls back in with the assistance of their teammates. Danny teamed up with Jackson, one of our middle school students. They had a great time and even won some of the rounds! They also played a challenging game in which they put a candy cane in their mouth and had to hold it there without their hands while Miss Dina hung additional candy canes on the hook. It got heavier and heavier! We then headed back to the room for Social Studies. First, we used a Harcourt Horizons textbook to read more about Earth. I simplified the text and we looked at landforms such as plains, deserts, mountains, and valleys. We also looked at bodies of water such as rivers, lakes, and oceans. Also in this text, we read a realistic fiction story about a young man who travels with his dog to see America. He marvels at seeing the farms of Iowa, the skies of Nebraska, the wind in Wyoming, the mountains in Colorado, the desert in Nevada, and the ocean in Oregon. Additionally, we completed page 20 in Danny's Geography workbook in which he had to discriminate between mountains and hills in different tasks. We reviewed Danny's calendar and then read a nonfiction informational book called, My First Book of Time by Claire Llewellyn. In this book, we discussed the calendar, seasons, the months of the year, the days of the week, and how people, plants, and animals change over time. We followed this up with a fun book entitled, Snowmen All Year by Caralyn Buehner. We made predictions throughout the story and also found the rhyming words on each page. We talked about how silly it would be to see a snowman watching the fireworks on July 4th or at the beach! We had fun looking for the hidden illustrations on each page. This also gave us a little more perspective on the seasons. Finally, we watched a digital reader about Hanukkah on Pebble Go as we have been discussing winter holidays. This reader reviewed the story of Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, and how the Jewish people celebrate with prayer, playing the dreidel, lighting the menorah, and sometimes exchanging gifts.
We watched two crash course videos World History #1 (Empty political rhetoric, hunter gatherers, fishing, agriculture, herders) and World History #2 (Civilizations, cities, specialization of labor, social stratification, central governments, rivers, Indus Valley, Mesopotamia, Nile River Valley, collaboration, cooperation) and discussed the topics.
Today was timeline project day! Danny and I cut and glued his timeline pieces onto our poster. We drew the timeline and put on the pictures, captions, and years on the poster. We then talked about each event and I asked Danny questions about when events occurred. Danny enjoyed seeing pictures of himself and telling about events that have occurred in his six-year timeline. We hung the project in Danny's room. In addition to our project,
we continued talking about holidays. We reviewed our FL Studies Weekly packet about holidays around the world from yesterday and then went through some questions and answers about the material presented. We then enjoyed a holiday themed book, Hanukkah Bear by Eric Kimmel. In this funny story, an almost blind and deaf ninety-seven year old woman who is known for her delicious latkes, mistakenly takes a visiting bear for her rabbi! We laughed at all the silly things the woman did with the bear! We ended the day with another fun holiday book, Snowmen at Christmas, by Caralyn Buehner which showed us all the fun things snowmen do to celebrate Christmas. The snowmen sneak off at night while all the people are asleep! We worked to find the rhyming words throughout the story as well as the hidden mouse in the illustrations on each page.
This afternoon, Danny and I read through a packet entitled, Timelines: Learning about the Past, Present, and Future. We read about history and the past. We chose which pictures looked like they belonged in the past. We read about how the present means what is happening right now. We matched pictures of items in their past appearance with the present day look. Next, we talked about the future and what Danny wants to be when he grows up. We discussed various professions and Danny repeatedly came back to "a dad". We wrote that in a sentence in which I provided his words in writing so that he could copy. He then drew a sweet picture of him as an adult with a little child by his feet. Finally, used 8 pictures to complete a timeline of his daily routine. We went through the items and put them in sequential order. Our next activity came through our FL Studies Weekly program, in which we discussed holidays around the world. We learned how people celebrate differently throughout the world, particularly birthdays and winter holidays. Did you know that on their birthday, children in Brazil eat candy shaped like vegetables? We learned that at Christmas in Mexico children break piñatas, and in France, children put their shoes by the fireplace for Father Christmas to fill them with gifts. We also learned that people in the Philippines hang stars in their windows for Christmas and people in England celebrate Boxing Day the day after Christmas in which they bring gifts to community helpers. We continued our studies with a nonfiction selection by Lisa M. Herrington, on the more commonly known, Hanukkah. We learned very simply about how it began, the Festival of Lights, and food and games. We read about the menorah, dreidel, and latkes. Finally, we read a fun winter book, Snowmen at Night by Caralyn Buehner, which has the snowmen sneaking off at night to participate in such fun events as sledding, racing down the hill, and even playing a baseball game!
Thursday, December 08, 2016
5:00 - 6:00; 60 min.-
Social Studies:
Vasco Balboa -
Ana was tasked with researching facts about her chosen explorer: Vasco Balboa. She found a copy of his portrait to include in her report. We used a web site about exploration and found some basic personal information (name, date of birth, death etc.). She then used Wikipedia to find some information about his life in Panama, and his expedition across the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Finally she found an tourism site and found the influence Balboa had on Panama, and how he is celebrated. She collected her data and prepared it to upload to her school webpage.
