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So, um, I took a little bloggy vacation and finally joined the ranks on Instagram!
My friend really encouraged me to take part in "Teacher Talk Tuesday" (#teachertalktuesday) on Instagram so I created an account. You can find me as "adventuresinsecondgrade". Please feel free to follow me! Right now, I have the pics that were on my phone from our last day of school with Field Day and our Minute to Win It games!
So, other than that, I have to admit, I haven't been very productive, other than trolling thru Pinterest, telling myself that it counts as my "1 teacher thing/day" I promised myself this summer! ;) That, and helping out a friend in her classroom pack it up and start getting it organized! She's already created a theme AND colors for next year! Whew! Made me start thinking of my own theme...something with meerkats, but not quite sure WHAT...safari? zoo? Hmm...thinking on that one. (Add another thing to the list!).
A big part of my to-do list was to clean up some of my end of year unit activities and share them!
In second grade in Virginia, we study ancient China and Egypt. It's fun, especially since several years ago I earned a Playmobil grant and have many of the Egyptian line in my classroom for students to create with!
One thing I created for my kiddos this year was an activity booklet on both cultures. After my success with the paper bag books during our Famous Americans unit, I wanted an "active" book for them to contribute to as well as help me check that they were comprehending!
So....after many fights with the copier, I finally managed to have the booklets in order so that you can copy them double-sided. When I say fights, I mean.....after doing a set of Egyptian ones BACKWARDS I told my kids it was okay, because in the Arab world they read stories right to left, not left to right, so we were okay.
They liked that idea so well most of them decided to write their names backwards on their book! Ha ha! They are ALL too familiar of my fights with the copier (and that sometimes, the copier wins!).
So, without further ado, here's a peek at my books! I'm pretty proud of them! All clipart was from public domain or Microsoft. I created them in Publisher but locked 'em into PDFs so I couldn't mess them up anymore! :) Click {here} to see them closer in TpT and {here} for Teacher's Notebook for Egypt and {TpT} and {TN} for China.
So, I hope you'll check them out and tell me what you think! My goal is to blog at least once/week (if not more) about what I'm doing to get ready for next year and *hopefully* share a few freebies! :)
I remember when I was little, I heard this expression and encouraged my dog (an avid digger) to dig to China so I could see the other side of the world. Obviously, it didn't happen (not to mention my parents, once they stopped laughing, told me it was impossible).
Now, I get to teach about Ancient China in second grade! We combine it with a unit about Ancient Egypt (and in third, they'll learn about Greece, Rome, and Mali). I wanted to share with you some of the things we do with Ancient China.
Of course, there's always the Anchor Chart. :)
But, we started our journey into the past with a field trip. That's right - a field trip to China! Except on this trip, no one gets motion sickness! Several years ago, I learned how to make virtual field trips with Google Earth, so we began our journey by crossing the United States and Pacific Ocean until we got to Asia. Oh yeah, there were lots of ooohs and aaahs. (I just LOVE Google Earth!). We then explored the Great Wall, the Panda Reserve, where the terra cotta warriors were found, the Huang He (Yellow River), and other areas of importance. If you'd like to experience it, you can go here to my wiki page where it's a quick download (just make sure you have Google Earth already installed on your computer!).
We continued to explore with a story about Chinese New Year, as well as other stories, and created our own New Year's dragons. Throw in a powerpoint about contributions, Brain Pop, a foldable in our interactive notebooks for symbols and characters of Chinese writing, as well as the occupations of the people....and that was pretty much it.
Hmmm. Doesn't sound like a lot, but we had fun learning and practicing our symbols. The camera must have taken a day off then. :) I did post my unit on TpT and TN, in case you are interested in checking it out!
At the culmination of the unit, we read about the Silk Road and created our own coins, drawing and writing about what we learned about Ancient China. Did you know the Chinese have holes in their coins so that they could wear them on a string around their neck? It helped in case someone tried to rob them....their money was hidden underneath their clothing!
I cannot believe how fast time is moving towards the end of the year! My kids have started a countdown and we have 28 days left (and I realize that's not all teaching days! Ack!).
This week, we celebrated Earth Day on Tuesday. Inspired by several Pinterest posts, my students created an Earth Day Promise poster. They really enjoyed doing the handprint (anything that involves paint!), which I told them helped seal their promise for taking care of the Earth, wrote their Earth Day promise, and created an Acrostic about how people should take care of our Earth. We preceded this activity by looking at our wiki Ecology page. The kids enjoyed watching how a plastic milk jug was turned into a fence post, and of course, the rapping worm (you have to check it out!). This really inspired some good conversation in my room about the Earth and how "Earth Day is Everyday."
I meant for us to celebrate Earth Day on Monday (closer to the Sunday calendar day), but a trip to China got in the way. (Yeah, imagine THAT field trip!). Well, we DID go on a field trip....just via Google Earth. Several years ago, I learned how to create a virtual field trip using Google Earth (mine is a pretty basic version) and created trips to China, Egypt, and Famous American homes. My students were so excited to "fly through the air and across the ocean" (as they said) to Asia, where we explored China. You can find the field trip here on our China wiki page (it's a download which will open your Google Earth program automatically. It does start at my former elementary school, but you can skip that part!). If you've never used Google Earth, it's a GREAT teaching tool and is a free download!
So, with our trip to China, we got a basic overview of the ancient culture to begin our unit. We then read the story "Chinatown" by William Low and created our own New Year's dragon! The kids did such a great job adding detail to their dragons (a template from Brain Pop Jr.) that we ran out of time!
More to post later on China and since this is such a lengthy post, prefixes/suffixes are going to be pushed out of the way till this weekend. I'm excited to share with you some of the things we've done this week and last (and somehow, is getting pushed into next week). I never thought I'd say I have really enjoyed teaching this concept! :)
