Heart of Dakota- BLHFHG Unit 11

The weeks are really flying by!  I can’t believe it will be Christmas next week.  Anyway, we just finished unit 11 and had a great week.

History/Geography:

This week in history we learned about the pilgrims working to build their homes now that they had decided where to settle.

Hailey looked over a map to see the route that the pilgrims took and looked to see the routes that other explorers before them had taken.

The pilgrims did not have glass to use for windows as they built their homes.  Instead they used brown paper and brushed oil on them to let more sunlight through.  So, Hailey rubbed some oil on a brown paper bag to see what happened.

Hunter made one too, but he did not cover his whole paper with oil.  So we held it up to the window to see the difference in the light that came through.

Hailey built a pilgrim house using Lincoln Logs

The finished house

We cut some pieces from the brown oiled paper to use as windows in the house.  Those windows must have let in a lot of cold air.

Science:

We have been doing a unit all about owls.  Our favorite part of the unit was dissecting some owl pellets.

Here are just a few of the bones we found in the owl pellet.

Language Arts:

We are still reading through Little House in the Big Woods.  Hailey really is not enjoying this book.  I had hoped we would love it but we are just having a hard time getting into the book.  Instead of begging me to read more like she usually does, she asks if we can skip reading for the day 🙁

Hailey did a little mapping activity to go along with the book.  She had to use the key on the map and then follow the directions to see where to add the different details on the map.

Copywork using her poem for the week.

We are working through a super fun Gingerbread Unit and I’m pretty sure we have read every version of the Gingerbread Man that there is.  There are lots of cute books and ideas to go along with them.

We read both “Gingerbread Baby” and then “Gingerbread Friends” and we really enjoyed both.  After we read “Gingerbread Friends” Hailey made this cute beginning, middle and end project.

We also enjoyed “Gingerbread Man Loose in the School” and then Hailey made a gingerbread man that looked like the one from the book and a missing poster to go along with him.  We took turns hiding the gingerbread man and then searching for him.

After we read “The Gingerbread Cowboy,” Hailey made this candy cane cactus.

The candy cane cactus hanging on our classroom tree.

We played Hangman to practice Hailey’s spelling words.

Other:

We added this cute tree to our classroom and then added decorations to it throughout the week.

One day we decided that, rather than doing our regular schedule, Hailey would throw a ball at our routine and whatever the ball hit was what we would do next.

One more week until our Christmas vacation!!  We are excited!

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Heart of Dakota- BLHFHG Units 9 & 10

After taking most of November off from Heart of Dakota to do a fun Thanksgiving Unit study, we dove right back in to HOD last week.  I don’t want to get too far off from where I had wanted to be before our Christmas break so we squeezed 2 units into one week.

History/Geography:

This week we read about the hard trip on the Mayflower and what is was like for the Pilgrims when they landed in America.

We did a fun little mapping activity practicing using north, east, south and west to find some corn in a basket.

We found Plymouth on the map and Hailey made a picture of what the coastline looks like where the Pilgrims landed.  Hunter helped her color the ocean.

Hailey added a new date to our timeline.

We did an activity where Hailey had to try to build a wall and then I would knock down part of the wall as she tried to build.  It related to the Bible story and our focus on the pilgrims trying to build their homes.  It was one of those activities that I thought seemed a little silly when I read it in the curriculum, but Hailey loved it!!  She giggled and giggled and wanted to keep doing it.

Language Arts:

I introduced the concept of historical fiction this week, as we are starting to read Little House in the Big Woods.

I told Hailey to act out what she thought it was like to be on the Mayflower and spot land after being stuck on the boat for so long.  I explained to her that she acted things out based on the facts she has learned about so that she could understand what historical fiction means.

I found this in one of my Mailbox books, it related perfectly to our book.  Hailey had to color and cut out the different foods that the Ingalls family prepared to store for the winter and then glue it to where they stored it.

We are doing a super fun Gingerbread Unit from Around the Kampfire.  Hailey worked on a cute folder from the unit that she is keeping all of her gingerbread papers in.

The front of the finished folder.  So cute!

Science:

This was another activity that I thought seemed a little silly and I actually skipped over it at first.  Then I figured we would just do it because it would only take a few minutes.  I am so glad we did it because Hailey loved it!  I put tape on the table to represent land, the blue X represents Virginia where the pilgrims had hoped to land.  The ball is the Mayflower and Hailey had to blow on it to try to get it to Virginia.  At first she was able to do it.  Then I blew on the ball from another direction and changed the course of where it went.

We put clay in the bottom of this container to show what it could look like under the water and why it was important for the pilgrims to settle where there was a bay deep enough for large boats to dock.  Our bay wasn’t deep enough, so the boat got stuck.

We also did a little experiment to see how the water cycle works.

We focused on learning all about owls.  Hailey and Hunter made a cute owl craft.

Hailey turned hers into a book and wrote a fact about owls on each page and then illustrated it.

The front of Hailey’s book.

One of the pages in her book.

We also dissected a couple of owl pellets, which was so interesting!!

Owls can, have, are chart

Christmas:

We have been reading all about the Christmas story and the real meaning of Christmas.

After reading the Christmas story, Hailey and Hunter used our Little People Nativity set to act out the story.

We are working on our own nativity set and adding a little at a time.

It was a great and busy week!

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Windsock Book Report

We finished reading “The Sword in the Tree” by Clyde Robert Bulla a few weeks ago and Hailey did a book report about the book.  She created a windsock book report, which turned out cute.  I found the idea here and changed things a little bit, but used the basic idea.

This is the windsock laying flat so you can see what is on it.  The top section has the name of the book, the author and some illustrations about the book.  Then on the strips below- the first one is left blank, the next one tells the setting, then the main characters, then a problem in the story, the solution, and finally the genre of the the story.

The completed windsock hanging up.

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Week in Review

Here are some of the activities we have been doing lately:

History:

We had so much fun doing our Thanksgiving unit and I am really sad that we’re all done with it. But, I’m excited for all of the fun stuff we’re going to do during December!

I saw this idea on First Grade Parade– isn’t it so cute!  We read “If You Sailed on the Mayflower” and then put interesting facts on our Mayflower.

Then Hailey (and Hunter) made a cute Mayflower.

Hailey’s was turned into a book of Mayflower facts.

She picked 5 interesting facts and then wrote a sentence about the fact and drew a picture of it.

We also made this fantastic Mayflower which Hailey and Hunter absolutely love!!

We made this really fun Pilgrim Craft and talked about what it was like to be a Pilgrim girl or boy.

We also used the Plimoth Plantation site and read about what the children did for fun.  We read that they enjoyed gliffes, which are like tongue twisters.  So, we had a lot of fun and laughs trying out some tongue twisters.

Language Arts:

Hunter loves reading time and always stops to listen to Hailey read.  We are going through these Emerging Readers pretty quickly.  Rather than spreading them over 5 days, Hailey has been reading them in 1 or 2 days.  She really enjoys reading the books and I think it is helping to build her confidence by reading these easy books.  We’ll be moving on to the harder books soon!

We played an Irregular Plural Nouns Go Fish game and Hailey won – she was just a little bit excited.  It was a great way to reinforce what she had been learning.

Math:

Math is definitely Hailey’s least favorite subject.  I try to find ways to make is fun for her, but she really doesn’t enjoy it.  We played a clock matching game- she had to find the time on the clock and then match it with the time in words (half past 3).  It ended up being really hard but she still seemed to enjoy it.

 Science:

We did a pumpkin unit for science and used the Pumpkin Patch Palooza unit from Mrs. Jump.

Hailey counting the lines on her pumpkin as part of a pumpkin investigation.

Hailey’s completed paper.

We also cut open a pumpkin to explore the inside.

We described the inside and outside of the pumpkin.

We roasted pumpkin seeds with the seeds from the pumpkin we cut open.  They turned out yummy!

Hailey read a little pumpkin book to Hunter to help him learn the life cycle.

We read “Pumpkin Jack” and then made our own Jack.  It’s sitting in this container so that we can observe what will happen over time.

 We also planted some pumpkin seeds and some corn seeds to see which one will grow faster and taller.  I am just hoping something will grow!

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!!

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