Land Ho!
October 05, 2016
Today I spent time setting up for our Columbus Day fun on Friday.
Here is what we did last year...
Y'all, today was an ABSOLUTE BLAST!
Here is what led up to our fun for today...this week we have been learning about explores!
We began by learning all about explorers, creating an anchor chart, and writing about where we would like to explore as an explorer.
I found the cute templates for the boy and girl templates here and made the paper to fit the writing prompt.
We then learned all about Christopher Columbus. The students were amazed that this happened over 500 years ago! After reading the books, we made these great sequencing boats.
Tip: After having the students cut out all of the sails, have the students find a spot in the room and lay out all the sails. Then teach them how to sequence them (put one behind the other) and read each sail many times until they are able to sequence them.
Our morning work.
Finally, TODAY, we packed our bags, created a map/telescope, and put our hats on for a journey to a new land! I found this idea from Jodi and isn't it the BEST?! My students absolutely LOVED IT!!!! They were so into it and many adults commented on how impressed they were with the deep understanding of facts that the students knew about the voyage!
My goal was that the students understood the risks, sentiments, preparation, and trading that goes into exploring BUT the students were so into this Columbus Day voyage that they also were all about learning certain "Columbus trivia" facts - such as 1492, the 3 names of the ships, etc.
A couple of tips...
- I did not have 7 volunteers so I took out a couple of the items to be traded for & kept the pumpkin (pumpkin muffins), cotton, feathers, popcorn, and cinnamon (cinnamon rice crispy treats.)
- We didn't have another room available to go visit, so I had my natives sit on picnic blankets outside and when we arrived, I had the students sit in groups of 5.
- Once everyone had traded in that group (and the group had talked about what the item was, how the item is used by the natives, what it feels like/tastes like/looks like/etc.) we would rotate to the next group.
- We completed the voyage day book altogether and once we finished I gave them some time to color.
- Before the voyage, I told the students that, like Columbus, we would be writing about our exploration and what we found and then sharing our exploration with our loved ones back home (they were supposed to read it with their families at home).
Happy Exploring & Happy Columbus Day (almost)!
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