Revolution!!

Revolution!

Is there anything more exciting to study than the American Revolution? I certainly love it and I love teaching it, so many great characters and too many biographies to possibly read in one unit. MFW provides some great reads but I thought I would offer up a few of my choice additions and supplements.

I found these History Pockets (pics 2,3,4) to make - they help to sort things out and give a sequence to events leading up to and during the Revolution.

George Washington's World is a brilliant book and I copy the black and white people pages and let the kids color all the characters while I read the assigned pages.

Benjamin Franklin - Live Wire - from the Heroes of History collection along with the Ben and Me novel written from the mouse, Amos' point of view.

Famous Figures of the American Revolution - color, cutout and put together these movable figures to make history come 'alive'

 Each child made a history pocket for the pages that we will add week to week. 

 Movable figures cover and completed Washington and Boone.

Ways to listen and save paper.

We starting reading 'The Hobbit' in November in anticipation of the movie coming at Christmas time.

The book is fantastic, a classic, a masterpiece in setting up the 3 following books, it's just also really wordy for their age. Tolkien's descriptions are sometimes paragraphs long about scenery. I love it, they tend to start moving around so....... we now color while we listen. It's great, no talking, lots of concentrating and sometimes a snack before bed.

Another new device that has saved us reams of paper already is this, 

THE BOOGIE BOARD!

It's an LCD writer that works well for math work, spelling words, and vocabulary lists, saving us lots of scratch paper.

Each student has one and they use them everyday. 

Fun to take in the car or to a waiting room and great for pictionary!

Week 10 + Fall activities

 Pacheesi ( the 'r' was added later) was invented in India and apparently the ruler used to spend hours playing a life size version of the game with his concubines as pawns. 

Ours was a little smaller but just as fun.

 We have a beautiful Liquid Amber tree in our front year and it's leaves put on a dazzling display every Fall - around Thanksgiving. We get 5 different colors on one tree and then.......they all fall off.

Kibru wanted a sample of each color and then made a collage to share with his class.