Being BALANCED With Nursery Rhymes

Balance is a term we use with our students.  We teach them this term by allowing them to have a balance of educational experiences.  We make sure to fill our day with a variety of different learning modalities to reach each of their learning needs.  We love when we have the opportunity to fit balance into an entire unit of study.  

Our Nursery Rhyme unit was the perfect time for us to incorporate balance into our unit.  We began by reading a nursery rhyme a day, finding the rhymes and completing a craft or worksheet to go along with the nursery rhyme.  

We tried our best to get the kids involved as much as possible, so we had the kids color puppets and act out the nursery rhymes, as well.  

One of our favorite parts of this unit is our Nursery Rhyme Olympics.  We get the kids up and moving as we have them recite the nursery rhyme and complete a kinesthetic activity to go along with it.  For example, we have the kids fill up a pail with cotton balls for Jack and Jill Went Up the Hill, complete a puzzle race for Humpty Dumpty,  jump over yard sticks for Jack Be Nimble, play follow the leader for Mary Had a Little Lamb, and balance an egg on a spoon for Hey Diddle Diddle.

 

Our nursery rhyme unit is complete with a Humpty Drop.  The kids create Humptys that will not break when dropped from a wall.  Our principal dresses up as the King of the Land and congratulates the kids for their successful drops.  The kids love making their Humptys at home with their parents and siblings.  

The Grinch and Holiday Traditions around the World

We’ve had a very exciting few weeks! The Grinch sent us packages every other day from a different location around the world. First, we got a letter from the Grinch, who was still in Whoville, explaining how he now loved Christmas and wanted to learn more about Christmas traditions, as well as other holiday traditions around the world.

 

His first stop? The North Pole! The Grinch sent us the book Santa’s Stuck by Rhonda Gowler Greene and Christmas Time by Gail Gibbons. The first day, we read Santa’s Stuck and completed this craft.

The second day, we read Christmas Time and began filling out a chart to track each holiday’s symbols, traditions, and country of origin, which we would complete for every holiday he visited. The students also completed a worksheet where they drew and labeled two Christmas traditions they learned about. Our next Grinchy package came from Mexico, where the Grinch taught us about Las Posadas.

We got a real poinsettia, as well as a piñata! You can imagine the kids’ excitement! The first day, we learned that hitting a piñata is a tradition that children in Mexico take part in each night of Las Posadas. So, the kids all took turns whacking the piñata (that looked like a burro, they learned). The second day, we read The Legend of the Poinsettia by Tomie DePaola and they each made paper poinsettias of their own. From Mexico, the Grinch traveled to Africa to learn about Kwanzaa. 

He sent us a postcard from Ethiopia, along with simply Kwanzaa book and directions for making a handprint kinara. The students again completed a worksheet where they drew and labeled two Kwanzaa traditions they learned about. Then we made handprint kinaras, along with a poem we found in The Mailbox Magazine.

Next, the Grinch was off to Israel! In this mystery package, the kids found it hilarious when they opened it and it was filled with toilet paper tubes! 

We read an informational book about Hanukkah, and then worked together to create three class menorahs.

Our sixth Grinchy package came from Sweden.It happened to arrive on December 13^th – St. Lucia Day! He sent us materials to make candle-wreath crowns, just like the ones St. Lucia wore.

The Grinch’s final package came from India. In it was a book about Diwali. We used the information we learned to complete the worksheet where they drew and labeled two Diwali traditions. The Grinch encouraged us to take a look at our now-completed chart and compare the traditions of all the holidays we learned about. Next week, we will be using Venn diagrams to do this. After winter vacation, the studnets will be sharing some of their own family traditions with the class in a short presentation. We’ll keep you posted! Happy Holidays!

Holidays Around the World

The students started off three weeks ago not even knowing what a tradition was, and now they are brainstorming all the traditions of each holiday we have studied.  Because the students picked up on all the highlights of each holiday celebrated so quickly, we decided to use the holidays to kick off our webbing for writing unit.  Each day we web the most important traditions of each holiday.  The students are expected to come up with four ideas, write their ideas and then illustrate a detailed drawing to go with their words.  So far, they are doing great!  Their ideas great, their handwriting looks wonderful and they are excited to be creating a book to share with their family and friends! 

If you would like to try this activity in your class, hit the pictures below!

 

     

What's Next? Grinchy Traditions!

Our next IB Unit is Where We Are in Place and Time and we are focusing on traditions. To kick off our unit, we will be spending the week after Thanksgiving with The Grinch! By Friday, we will have learned all about how the Grinch’s character changes from the beginning to the end of the story and how the Whos celebrate Christmas in Whoville. Then, the fun will really begin!

Our classes will receive letters from the Grinch explaining that he enjoyed learning about Christmas traditions in Whoville so much that he plans to travel the world to learn about holiday traditions in other countries. Each day, we will receive a package from the Grinch telling his location, the holiday that country celebrates, and including a book for us to read and an activity for us to do to learn about that holiday’s traditions. (Download the Grinched font we used to prepare the letters here.)

Each day, we will add to a running chart that we can use to compare and contrast the holidays and their traditions.

The Grinch will travel to:

The North Pole – Christmas

Africa – Kwanzaa (we realize that Kwanzaa began in America but it was celebrated by people of African descent)

Israel – Hanukkah

Mexico – Las Posadas

Sweden – St. Lucia Day

India – Diwali

Some days, the students will be asked to draw and label two traditions for each holiday or to compare holiday traditions. Download a free copy of the worksheets we created here. Other days, they will complete a craft or activity (i.e. make a poinsettia, take turns swinging at a piñata, work cooperatively to create a toilet paper tube menorah, etc.).

We will post pictures as we move through the unit. Once we have learned about holiday traditions around the world, the students will conduct a family interview to learn more about a tradition their family engages in, and will present this tradition, along with an artifact/song/dance, to the class.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Mapping Our Community

Hi All,
We are moving along in our "How We Organize Ourselves" unit and we had a GREAT week.  After learning about all the community helpers, the students came up with all the different places that are important in the community.  The kids then chose the building they would like to make.  They spent lots of time adding details and making their pictures look good so that we could tell what they were on our map.

Then, as a class, we sat down and discussed where each building should go on the map.  The kids debated which building were most important, and where they should be placed.  For instance, at first we had the community pool in the middle of the map.  Soon, the kids decided that the post office and police station were more important and should be in the middle.  They also chose to separate the two fire stations so that they could help people on different sides of the community.  Later, we created roads, railroad tracks, trees and a lake.  The kids chose different symbols to represent these different features on the map.

At this point, one little girl asked "What are maps even used for?"  This was just so exciting!  We added that question to the Wonder Wall, and began searching for the answer.

Finally, we introduced the compass rose and began asking the students to identify where things were.  The kids did a great job and they were so engaged because it was something they had created!

Check out these pictures of the process!

Asking Questions

This past week, we had two community helper visits - one from a local police officer and another from a firefighter. Before each visit, the students came up with a ton of questions to learn more about them. We introduced the “Wonder Wall” during these lessons by writing the students’ questions on sticky notes and adding them to the speech bubbles above their heads.

 This was the first time we had generated questions as a class, and were super impressed with the kids’ inquiries! During inquiry, students are encouraged to generate questions to drive their own learning, so these activities supported our IB unit perfectly! We plan to do several more asking questions lessons before transitioning to having the students add questions about anything they wonder about, at any time, to the “Wonder Wall.”

Unit #2 Begins...

We are beginning our next unit of study! One down… 5 more to go!  Our unit, “How We Organize Ourselves” focuses on community helpers.  We will be discussing their roles, their location in the community, and how cooperation amongst people in a community makes a safe and comfortable place to live.  We will even check out community helpers around the world.  We will investigate the similarities and differences of the different countries’ community helpers with ours here in the United States.

This first week we are just focusing on community helpers, in general.  We are reading nonfiction books that highlight different jobs in our community.  We have created a community helper flipchart with slides for brainstorming, graphing, and identifying community helpers and their roles, to help spice up our lessons! And best of all, we created community helper bingo cards so our students can learn and have fun at the same time!  You can check out the flipchart and the bingo cards on TPT, by clicking the pictures below!

We will continue adding all the different fun, inquiry based, activities in this unit, as we go.  Check back in for more ideas!