For the last two weeks before our Thanksgiving vacation, we spent time learning about the very first Thanksgiving and how it all came about. We first brainstormed and talked about what we all knew about Thanksgiving, and many of our ideas revolved around spending time with family, eating lots of yummy food, and playing with cousins. Then, before teaching the students anything, I asked the class to tell me some things they were wondering about related to Thanksgiving in the hopes that over our learning, I would teach them and answer their wondering questions. Many students came up with great questions, like "Does everyone celebrate and eat turkey?", "Why do we even have Thanksgiving?" and "Does everyone donate food like I do?" My hope was that through our teaching, they would build an understanding of the story of Thanksgiving and the meaning behind it. Right away, students picked up on the fact that the word "Thanks" is in Thanksgiving. We talked about how it is a time for people to say thank you for all that they have. We made our own "thankful" turkeys, where we colored turkeys and drew/wrote 6 things in our lives that we were thankful for. Many students did pets, parents, friends, family members, and even special things like "love or cuddles" (these are hanging in our hallway currently, but will be sent home soon). Then, I began telling them the story of the first Thanksgiving. We used a globe and started our story in England with some people called the Pilgrims. With a small stick puppet of the Mayflower ship, the story was told of their long, tough journey to America and what happened when they arrived here. We heard this story about 4-5 times over the course of 2 weeks, telling it with pictures, words, and even beads! We used colored beads and strung them on a string to retell the story, using a color to represent a part of the story. This visual allowed students to retell the story on their own without forgetting parts, just by using the colors to remind them (this bead story went home, along with a description in words for parents). I hope that they tell you or family members at Thanksgiving time! From here, we retold the story again in a different way. Each student chose or received one part of the story of Thanksgiving after we really broke the story down piece by piece into 15 different parts. Then, when they received their part of the story, they drew a detailed picture (with no words) to represent that part. Afterwards, we compiled the pictures and students used their voices to retell their parts and we made a class Voicethread story!! Click on the button below to watch it! (**You may or may not have to register to watch it (not usually though). It isn't a movie that continues on its own, so you have to click the arrow after each page to see the next page). To end our week, we enjoyed creating our own Native American and Pilgrim hats/headbands! Students used colors associated with these people, and decorated them with designs and feathers. At the end of our day, we discussed how Pilgrims and Native Americans did things so differently back a long time ago. They didn't have grocery stores to go to in order to get their food, but they hunted, grew, and made it all. So, in the spirit of that, we worked as a class and made our own butter! We didn't have a butter churn like they would use, but we added cream to a container with a lid, and then took turns shake, shake, shaking it and low and behold, we turned that liquid cream into butter (some pictures below)! We tried it on crackers and enjoyed our hard work while watching the short Charlie Brown video "Welcome to America, Charlie Brown", the story of the First Thanksgiving retold by the Peanuts characters.
We had a great time learning about this history, and while I couldn't tell the students because we didn't have Friday together to end our learning because of our snow day, I hope that you all have a very Happy Thanksgiving and enjoy your time with loved ones! We had a super fun Halloween week loaded with fun learning and dressing up! As part of our "Live the Code" spirit week, students got to dress up and practice collaboration as we worked as a team to have lots of participation each day. On Monday, students showed respect to their country by wearing Red, White, and Blue (no picture). On Tuesday, we showed we can persevere and reach our dreams, and wore pajamas. On Wednesday, which happened to be Halloween, we dressed up like book/movie characters or what we wanted to be when we grow up, showing we can be responsible to be all we can be. On Thursday, we showed our collaboration by teaming up with a friend(s) and beings twins. And, on Friday, we showed we can have integrity and put a cap on dishonesty...and we all wore hats (no picture). It was super fun to dress up and we even celebrated as a school on Friday with a fun Pep Rally and basketball game. We also had a blast this week becoming scientists and testing out our observation and testing skills with our pumpkin investigation! Not only did we compare our pumpkins with each other, noticing they were all different colors, sizes, and shapes, but we also measured how tall they were, counted how many lines they had, and counted how many seeds they had (this was a messy and gooey undertaking!). Students tested their math skills with counting seeds by laying them out on 10-frames and counting by 10s to see how many. We all predicted the largest pumpkin would have the most seeds, but it was actually one of our medium pumpkins that did...with over 450 seeds! We all also predicted and tested if our pumpkins would sink or float, and the majority of the class thought that the larger pumpkins would sink while the smaller sized ones would float. But...when we all tested...we found out that they ALL floated!!! It was a crazy thing to see! Enjoy some pictures below of our fun week :) |