Summer Time Begins

I am So blessed to have been able to visit Siesta Key Beach in Florida. It was a much needed Siesta from the crazy end of the school year. It was a time to relax and to catch the vision of some friends who will be planing a church in the area. I am so excited for them and the challenges they will face. Every challenge gives us a better glimpse into God's power, strength, and blessings. I would love to join them in North Port, FL. It is in God's hands. We all know getting a teaching position in this economy is nothing short of a miracle. So glad I serve a God of miracles.

Now that I'm home, my time will be spent by the pool reading. I haven't decided what I want to read yet but we shall see what comes up. I am currently reading, Circle Maker, a book about prayer, and Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, a book I'm considering for a read aloud next year.

What's on your summer reading list?

Thanksgiving - Migration

Thanksgiving is the perfect time to teach about migration.  Lucky for me! It's our next lesson idea in S.S., and you know how I love SS!  We will be reading Across the Wide Dark Sea by Jean Van Leeuwen. 

But we can’t just stop with reading the book.  We just have to add some art to this lesson.  We will be creating jumbo postage stamps to honor the fearlessly brave Pilgrims accompanied by paragraphs about why we chose the either a pilgrim, pilgrim family, or even the Mayflower to honor on a stamp.  I can’t wait to share the final results with you all!

Hoping for a great week!

We're back to integrating Language Arts and Socials Studies.  In theory, it seems like a wonderful idea.  Informational text as well as literary texts can be found for many social studies concepts.  Expect for our lovely little county.  It feels like we are reinventing the wheel everyday.  It would be a little easier if we had the reading resources we needed, but you make do with what you got!

So to make timeline of our little farm county more interesting….we created timeline flip books!  FUN!!!!  The kiddos were never more pumped to make a timeline before in their lives.  I complied the information they would need for their timelines into a short reading.  For my highfliers I took the dates off the dates and had them find the order from the reading.  For my lower little buddies, I kept the dates allowing them to simply match them up.

This was my example copy, and thanks to the help of a parent volunteer, I was able to have 50 more (minus the writing) for our lesson.

After labeling the pages of our flip books, we cut and organized our dates, then glued and illustrated each important date.  A bit of trivia: Carroll County grew wormseed which was processed to make medicines used to get rid of ring worm…..oh the interesting things in Carroll County!

The kids were pumped about timelines, we all learned something new about Carroll County, a great time in Social Studies!!!  Now, on to the next Social Studies lesson, migration and jobs in the past…  Any ideas bloggers?