We're Living Like Pilgrims

As promised, here is a snippet from our days prior to Thanksgiving Break which will from now on will be known as Pilgrim Days! 

 

Our week began with a special visit from our dear friend Mrs. Tumney who retired last year from her position as Lena Dunn's sweet and helpful librarian. Mrs. Tumney came and read a Thanksgiving story to the class that really made us use our predicting skills. 

Our class also took a virtual field trip to Plimoth Plantation in Plymoth, Massachusetts. During our Science/Social Studies block throughout the month of November, we had spent our time learning all about the pilgrims' voyage from England to America. We learned that there were actually two ships that left the England harbor (the Mayflower and the Speedwell) and that the Pilgrims had to spend two months aboard the Mayflower - oh and we also learned what a chamber pot was used for! The students even graphed the weather at Plimoth Plantation verses the weather in our own hometown of Washington for our field trip day. I'm telling you, we packed it all in!

The day of the field trip, the students were given tickets to board the Mayflower and boy were they excited! They listened intently as we learned what life was like for the pilgrims at Plimoth Plantation in 1627. The sweet little "pilgrims" took notes and then we broke into small groups to discuss new things they had learned. 

Next, we got to shaking and made some homemade butter (hence the recipe cards your student brought home that day) and tasted it on some crackers. Each student was allowed to record on a chart whether or not he/she liked the butter and then we graphed our results during our math block.

Our day ended with pilgrim games that are believed to have been played by pilgrim children such as tic-tac-toe, a form of hula-hoop, ring toss, and riddles. I leave you with some fun pictures of the "pilgrims" in action...

I hope your family had a fabulous Thanksgiving Break and are enjoying the anticipation that the Christmas season brings!

We're in the Double Digits!

Over the last month, our class has ROCKED in math! We have covered two digit addition and are currently mastering two digit subtraction with and without regrouping. As always, I feel like the students grasp ideas better when we can use our hands, so to help them out with the concept of two digits we used work mats. For several days in a row, we utilized the math work mats which encouraged the students to physically carry the digit/number tile over to the tens place when adding two digit numbers like 43+29. They really enjoy learning in partner groups and I love when they work in pairs because they get to demonstrate understanding, cooperatively correct one another, and re-teach by explaining their reasoning to their peers. In the end, learning concepts like two digit addition and subtraction becomes concrete for the students and the whole time they are having fun!

Also, before we took a break for Thanksgiving, we covered a story in our reading books called Ah, Music! We spent the week studying vocabulary words like vibration, volume, performance, tune, and concentrate. At the end of the week, we were privileged to have Mr. Wright as our special guest who brought in instruments such as a guitar, a snare drum, and maracas to illustrate the week's vocab words. When all was said and done we not only knew our vocabulary words, but we also walked away with a new tid bit of knowledge: the snare drum is the loudest non-amplified (meaning you don't have to plug it in) instrument. 

Stay tuned for the next post which will highlight our classroom's Pilgrim Day!