New Project

Today was the start of a new history project.  We will cover the years of 1607 - 1776 in just 5 weeks!  We will focus on events leading up to the Revolutionary war.  The presentation will be a Wax Museum, where each student will choose an important person to research and share a memorized speech as that person from history.  We kicked it off by reading a timeline of early United States history and an article about colonization.  Then we made Thanksgiving Bracelets that went with a poem about the Mayflower and Plymouth colony.  Then we made one of three types of colonial hats, either a colonial bonnet, a powdered wig, or a tri-cornered hat.  Because the students will dress up for their presentation, this activity seemed both appropriate and a fun way to get interested in the people of the Revolution.

In addition to this entry event, we started expository writing today.  We will shift gears with our writing to write to give information.  We will focus on organizing our writing with topic sentences and facts, rather than description and dialogue like we included in narratives.

Have a great week!

Project Building Days, Gratitude Journal Challenge

This week has been much anticipated by the students, it is the week we build during project time!  Thank you for helping your student get the supplies into the classroom.  The creativity level in the classroom is very high and I especially appreciate how they are using their research to confirm what they are making.  They are focusing on building things that represent Native American life, according to their research on their chosen tribe.  They are also learning about when the Europeans came into their region and what that was like.   Lots of learning going on.

We are working on writing skills in the classroom this week, focusing on eliminating run-on sentences and sentence fragments.  The students will get to apply these skills when they choose aone of their narratives to revise and publish.  We are also starting to write in Gratitude Journals.  If you would like to take this gratitude challenge by fulfilling the same assignment as your child, you can choose one person or thing you are thankful for each school day and write a paragraph (5 sentence minimum) about why you are thankful for this person or thing.  We will do this for the 11 school days before Thanksgiving.  It will be a challenge for all of us to complete this, but we are going to do our best.  We hope to use writing to define and express our thoughts, as well as focus on the positive things in our lives.  Please let me know if you do this, even if you miss some days!  What a great way to prepare for Thanksgiving and have meaningful discussions with your child.

Have a great week!