Teaching With Style: Social Studies

Showing posts with label Social Studies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Social Studies. Show all posts
Part of the first grade standards for Hawaii state social studies is to learn about American Symbols! My teaching team puts together these adorable books that I want to show you and provide some resources for where you can put together your own!  I've included lots of pictures, lots of links to products and freebies that I use, and also a freebie I put together for you that you can download at the end of this post!


We start by singing a silly song I found on YouTube by KinderBlossoms.  We then do a simple foldable in our Science and Social Studies Books.


I use the organization idea from my gal Corinna at Surfin' Through Second to separate my notebooks.  You can download the song freebie here.


We then make US Symbols books that I prep and comb bind ahead of time.  We use a combo of pages from Lindsay at Teacher Bits and Bobs and craftivities.  Each day we introduce a new US symbol, write about it, and make a craft.  We start with the world's oceans and continents, then focus in on our state in the US, Hawaii.  I like to play a continents and oceans song from YouTube, too.  I can't find the one I usually play, but there are a lot of good ones if you search on the site.   


These are some of the crafts we've done in the past. 


However, I switched some of them up this year.  We made the eagle and Liberty Bell crafts from Mrs Ricca's freebie President's Day packet.



For the Statue of Liberty, I did a directed drawing.  I love this one from Art Projects for Kids and also this one that is just her head.  The kids' paintings turned out beautiful! The parents loved seeing this project at Open House!

Speaking of Lady Liberty, I like to throw in this fun experiment when we learn about her to find out why she is green if she is made out of copper.  The kids love it! I bought this pack and use the worksheets in our science and social studies journals from Kindergarten Boom Boom, and also these directions from Buggy and Buddy.  I printed this out and put it by our experiments during Open House.  You can download it here.

For the flag, I cut white rectangles as the background, smaller rectangles for blue, red stripes, and then glitter for the stars.  

For the Pledge of Allegiance, I use Lori's freebie, just shrunk down to fit on the page.

There are a couple pages we made ourselves.  That includes symbols for our state and school, the White House, the world, and an assessment.


We also did a Lady Liberty OCDE Project GLAD® Pictorial Input Chart.  I'm becoming an OCDE Project GLAD® trainer, so I try to practice the strategies any chance I get!  The kids were fascinated that you can walk inside the statue and see out from the crown! I also wrote a poem that I included in my freebie.  

Via Pinterest

You can download my freebie with a poem, interactive journal, crafts for the world, state symbols, and the White House, as well as an assessment for free on my Google Drive!

How do you teach the US Symbols? 



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Recently I had the opportunity to review the new recycled school glue from Nine Lives Products.  This glue is the only recycled glue available on the market! It's made from recycled styrofoam and plant-products, and the best part - it smells like oranges!

My class has been using interactive journals for math, reading, science, and social studies.  I love how the kids have an instant review!

We used the new glue on our social studies notebooks.  We are studying economics right now and learning about different kinds of resources.

The glue has a nice applicator tip and is easy to squeeze the bottle.  I did have a few problems with it getting clogged in the tip, but it was nothing that a trusty paperclip couldn't handle.  The caps were easy to get off, too.

We are using Corinna's economics unit.  We love it!

Do you want to try out a sample of recycled school glue for yourself?  I'm giving away 3 samples!  Just enter from the Rafflecopter below.  I'll pick a winner on Wednesday night! 





a Rafflecopter giveaway
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For the 2nd year in a row, my class participated in a postcard around the country project hosted by Cheryl at Primary Graffiti.  We LOVE receiving our postcards and reading each one.
Here is our bulletin board from last year.  Each state was a different color and we attached strings from the cards to the state on the map.  This was the extent to our studies, though.  Read the postcard, find the state, and attach it to the board.  

This year, I decided to make it more academic and we focused on each region of the US.  This ties in community and mapping skills.  I used Tracy's (from Creekside Teacher Tales) US State pack and we read about each state.  For each region, table groups got to choose one state to make a poster and present it to the class.  They used the articles from Tracy's pack and the postcards for the information for their posters.  It really was a lot of fun.

Here is my map from this year.  I colored all the states in a region the same color and tacked the postcards next to it on the map.

Another fun thing I did was invite a special guest teacher who has lived in that region to come teach a lesson.  Lucky for me, most of the teachers at my school are from all over the country.  While these teachers came to teach my class, I went to teach theirs, we just switched.  It was so much fun!

One of my second grade teammates is from Minnesota, so she did a lesson while we were learning about the midwest.  Since Minnesota has so many lakes, she played a fun game with the kids about different kinds of fish they can catch there.  Fishing is HUGE in my community, so the kids absolutely loved it!

One of the first grade teachers is from Pennsylvania and she came to teach while we were studying the northeast region.  She picked up a fun Pennsylvania State Book by Loving Life in Kindergarten and a Liberty Bell craft from Sarah Helm.  She also made each student chocolate chip cookies (the state cookie!) and a Hershey's kiss (since the Hershey's chocolate factory is in PA).

Since I am from Oregon, I taught my students about my state for the western region.  I read a couple books I own about Oregon (Spenser Goes to Portland, B is for Beaver: an Oregon Alphabet, and Goodnight Oregon). We read some songs about volcanos and the ring of fire (connecting Oregon and Hawaii), then we did a volcano craft.  I made it, but haven't gotten it ready for TpT yet.  Here is a free one if you are interested from No Time for Flash Cards.

For the southwest region, my mother in law came in to teach while she was visiting.  The kids called her Mrs. Heinlein 1 and me Mrs. Heinlein 2, since it was her name first :)  She used to live in Phoenix and Flagstaff, AZ, so she was the perfect guest!  She brought in a lot of beautiful silver and turquoise necklaces that were made by Navajo.  She also brought in a picture of her old house in Phoenix to show the kids the stucco siding and desert landscaping.  We bought G is for Grand Canyon for her to read to the kids.
Here are some other southwest books that were in my library.

The best part of it all, though, was the sand art! 

My mother in law drew these and I helped her trace them with a sharpie and scan them into my computer.  We wanted the paper to be heavy enough to hold the sand, so I cut down watercolor paper to 8.5x11 and ran it through my school's copy machine in the bypass tray.  Heavy construction paper would work, too.  I got the sand at a craft store on Maui.

If you are interested in teaching about the southwest region and sandpainting, you can download this Navajo Sand Art unit for free!  It's 16 pages long with a nonfiction article, page for taking notes, questions, a writing paper for after the art is done.  There is also a sheet which explains the symbolism of the sand colors. 





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Aloha! This past week has been cuh-razy!  Report cards went home last Thursday, my Quarter 3 weekly planner is currently past due, and my beautiful little sister was here all week.

Here she is on a little hike we took near my favorite beach.  The rock in the background is iconic for Lanai and is called Sweetheart Rock, or Pu‘u Pehe (you can read about the legend here). This was her first trip to Lanai and it was soooo nice to spend time with her!

In addition to some island sight-seeing and adventures, I did some fun MLK activities with my students.

First off, we started by reading our Scholastic News magazine.  This helped build some background knowledge.

I then read one of my many Martin Luther King, Jr. books.  

I chose March On! The Day My Brother Martin Changed The World by Christine King Farris.

We then watched my FAVORITE MLK book on video, Martin's Big Words.  Watch it here on Teachertube. 

After learning all about Martin, we put our new knowledge to the test and created Simply Skilled in Second's MLK Flip Flap books.  They turned out so cute! Here is a student using his magazine to fill out the pages. 

I didn't copy the last two pages on legal sized paper to make them longer, so I just stapled the books across the bottom to make them match up.  Worked perfect!

I love this rainbow one!

 We then got to work on the Martin craft I have done for the past 3 years.  Check out this post for directions and a freebie template if you are interested.

Even the art teacher was impressed!  I had 3rd graders who were in my class last year stop by the room and reminisce over making these last year. Such sweet kids!

I love teaching about Martin Luther King, Jr.  He brings such a great message about peace and equality.  I shared this quote on my FB page last week:

Do you have a favorite quote or activity that you use each year to teach about MLK, Jr? Please share!


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I've been out of the loop for awhile.  I have to explain myself!  Here is what I've been up to:

1.  School got out last Friday and I worked my tail off making sure that my classroom was closed out, that my report cards were completed, and that my cumulative files were filled out.  Boy, was that tiring!
Here is my room all cleaned and ready for the Boys and Girls Club to use for summer school!

2.  Then on Saturday, my baby girl's preschool had their annual graduation. We were unprepared for the craziness! Here she is with all of her congratulatory leis she got from friends. 

3.  Then my cousin came to visit from San Diego. We snorkeled, paddle boarded, and kayaked at Club Lanai, went to the Lanai Animal Rescue Center, had dinner at the Four Seasons Lodge at Koele, heard Paula Fuga (an amazing Hawaiian singer), had a bonfire potluck at the local farm, and swam in the Keiki pond at the tide pools. It was an amazing, but busy 4 days! 





3. Then one of my best friends here on the island is moving back to California, so we had a beach party with a bunch of people and then a smaller champagne brunch with only the new teachers. There were 6 of us hired this year and we call ourselves "The Newbies". We are going to miss Andrea!

We even had a piñata, but filled it full of little goodies for Andrea to remember us by!

4. After all the festivities, I have been beat! It's been hot here, so I let the kids run through the sprinkler as I laid on the couch and watched the entire 1st and 2nd seasons of Scandal. Hey, no judgements. I needed this!

5. And now for your freebie! My school does not have a social studies curriculum, even though the State of Hawaii has some pretty specific social studies standards.  I was racking my brain trying to figure out how to teach this one:

SS2.4.1 Describe the different ways people gain authority and the limits of such authority.

I looked on Teachers Pay Teachers and just couldn't find anything.  Then I talked with my good friend Corinna from Surfin' Through Second and she had the idea to talk about jobs.  Bingo!  I can do that!  I ended up defining the word Authority for the class and talking about it.  Then I read a book about different jobs (A-Z Community Jobs, or something like that).  After each job we talked about the kind of authority that person holds.  For example, as a teacher I have the authority to choose which kinds of lessons my classroom does, but I do not have the authority to decide which kinds of lessons the other teachers do.  After the convo and the book, the kids wrote about which job they want when they grow up and wrote about the kind of authority that job held.  Their responses were pretty funny!  Apparently, there will be a handful of zookeepers on Lanai in the future :)

Click on the picture below to download the written response, in case you have a standard like this, too.

Now that you see how busy I have been over these past couple of weeks, will you please forgive me for neglecting this little blog?  Pretty please!!  How has your May been going?

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Five For Friday linky party.


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