A Special Visitor

We were very lucky to have Maria’s grandma come and share the traditions of her Kaw Indian Heritage. She shared the dressing of the tribes at their festivals and showed how they made many things and how much work is put into making the clothing, jewelry, and tools. It was fun to see Maria dress up in her Kaw clothes and then she dressed Owen up in boy clothes and showed the whole class how to dance to the beat of the Indian drums.

   

We finished up this fun visit with a real Native American Storyteller! Maria’s great Aunt shared stories from their tribe and told the students how each story and Native American tale taught a lesson.

 

It was a really fun and educational time!  Thank you ladies for sharing your heritage with us!

Pilgrims Join the Native Americans

We finished up our learning of Native Americans by talking about the tradition of the Pow Wow. We also read a story called Giving Thanks and understood how the Native Americans lived off the land and all they taught the Pilgrims when they came to America.

We made Friendship Pouches that would be brought to a Pow Wow with a gift to say thanks for letting us Dance With the Indians.

 

After completing our Native American study we sailed to America on the Mayflower with the Pilgrims and landed on Plymouth Rock and became friends with the Native Americans that we have learned about.

 

I know we all agreed that our life today is much easier than the life the Pilgrims had and we are very thankful for the traditions that we have today. Here are our cute Pilgrim girls and boys.

 

Native Americans

We spent this past week learning about Native Americans. Our centers were all Indian themed. We enjoyed a lot of Native American tales and did some fun art jobs to go along with the stories. We also worked on a study of different tribes and the different types of homes they made. We are creating a book of what we learn about Native Americans.

At this center they  listened to the book I Can Read About Indians and then worked on drawing Indians in different setting and writing facts that they learned.

They put Indian symbols in ABC order and sorted Indian cards with different r clusters to go with a skill in reading.

 

They were introduced to using a ruler to measure to the nearest inch. They measured different Native American symbols.

 

Another center they unscramble words to make a complete sentence about Indians and they worked on number order to 75 by putting sets in order from least to greatest.

 

These are 3 of the legends that we read this week. In the story Raven we learned how the light was put in the sky. The Legend of the Bluebonnet taught us about making sacrifices and not being selfish. The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush taught us that everyone is different and has a special gift to share with others.

They loved this art job where we made the Indian Paintbrushes. We also made Indian headbands and collected our feathers for good behavior. Here are our Indian Princesses and Indian Warriors.

Fire Clown Assembly

We were very lucky to have some silly fire fighters come to our school on Friday. They did a presentation  on Fire Safety and made it fun for everyone.  They got the students involved by acting out what to do if there is  a fire in your house and the safe ways to get out.  Our own Carter got to be the tree out front of the house and they discussed to have a meeting place. Carter was the tree and meeting place.                       

One of the fire fighters dressed up in full gear and showed the kids what he would look like and sound like as he breathed through his mask. It was a good way to show the kids to not be afraid.

Our Fall Friends…Scarecrows!

We spent the first week of November honoring those cute fall friends… the Scarecrow! Our center rotations had different games using the scarecrow theme.  Our centers were measuring a scarecrow using nonstandard measurement, sorting scarecrows by word families, building short vowel words, going through the corn maze using a calculator to add and subtract, matching crows to scarecrows by counting dimes and pennies, and using addition facts to build a scarecrow. Of course the week was crazy busy and I didn’t get any pictures of the kids working hard at their centers, but they had a lot of fun and worked hard!

Here is one of our art projects that we did after we read a few stories about scarecrows and discussed different ways to describe scarecrows using adjectives.    

We finished up our week using a sentence wheel to create super sentences about scarecrows!