All About The Pilgrims & The Wampanoags

November 11, 2017
November has been flying by! I cannot believe that there is only one more week until Thanksgiving Break! 

 There's been a lot of little things popping up into our school schedule that I've been reverting to a "we will get to this lesson when we get to it" mentality more than usual. Usually I teach Pilgrims & Wampanoags in one week...this year it's taking about 2 weeks to fit it all in with scheduling!

We started our unit on Pilgrims by learning all about who the pilgrims were and what life was like on the Mayflower. This is a big research unit for my first graders. 

 To start learning about the pilgrims, I have the students act out what happened. I have some be the separatists/Pilgrims, one be the king, one be the businessmen who funded the Pilgrims journey.


Then, my Mayflower activities have always been a hit, so we did those same activities this year.


After the students make their chests, they watch about 5 minutes of Charlie Brown's voyage. After about 5 minutes, we pause the video and as a class we research more about what the Mayflower was like by reading this book. 


Basically, I read some more pages of the Mayflower book and then the first graders write about it in their own Mayflower books and then continue watching a little more of the video. 


Once they completed their books we talked about how in order to get off the Mayflower the Pilgrims need a smaller boat called a shallop because the water was too shallow. This boat also helped them explore different locations until they settled at Plymouth. We didn't have too much time this day so I had my students work on these shallop puzzles. 

I don't use too many videos in my instruction because I think that real life practicing is more efficient. My first graders do love going on their Mayflower journey with Charlie Brown. I pause the video frequently. When Charlie Brown & his friends are about to get off the Mayflower, I pause the video & my first graders must complete the "Life Of A Pilgrim" activities before we can continue on (and finish) the journey with Charlie Brown. 


Then, we continue learning about life in the New World by reading all about Squanto & the Wampanoag Native American tribe. After we read each section of the book, the students think about 1-2 facts they learned and they write it in their All About The Wampanoag booklets. The students are still working on these books and learning about the Wampanoags.
Andrea Sign

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)! 
Andrea Sign