A famous American - Squanto!

Squanto and friend!

Writing about Squanto

There is nothing like a real life story full of adventure, and reading about Squanto and his adventurous life held everyone's attention! Reading how he sailed to England at age 14 and lived there for 9 years, learning to speak English along the way, and then about his return trip and subsequent capture to be sold as a slave in Spain, fired everyone's imagination. Luckily he had help escaping, returned once again to Plymouth, only to find that his tribe had perished from a sickness. 
This paved the way for him to join the Pilgrims who had suffered as well all through the first winter. He taught them invaluable hunting and planting skills, was an interpreter between them and other tribes, and was instrumental in helping the Plymouth colony take root. The kids wrote a 'newspaper' style article telling of his life. Some went home today and others will on Monday.

Loved these books!

Write all about it!

What a life story!

Next we moved on to learning about the Pilgrims and have started a writing booklet called, The Adventures of Pilgrim _____. The first day we wrote from the point of view of a pilgrim child leaving on the Mayflower. What would we pack? How would we feel about leaving friends behind and heading off to a new land? Today we wrote about arriving in Plymouth and told all the work and jobs we needed to do. They are so motivated to write on these real life scenarios!

 Best of all, we started our shoe box Thanksgiving dioramas! Today we glued down the grass and sky, added a paper Mayflower, a 3-D cabin, and some people.

Busy writers

These are hard working 'pilgrims'!

On Monday we will use clay to make tiny Thanksgiving foods and animals. We will even have a small Plymouth Rock with the year 1620 painted on. They are loving the project! (And I cleared one mess of shoe boxes out of the attic!) 

Some sample writing completed!

Our class library scene

 We have needed those creative outlets after taking and getting ready for more math tests. We completed Topic 4, and the results went home today. The benchmark test for trimester 1 is Monday.

One exciting activity in math this week was the introduction of.... calculators! We all had individual calculators which we used to correct addition problems, and we learned how to practice skip counting on them as well. The delights of the lowly calculator are not to be underestimated!

During their computer/tech. specialist this week, the kids used all sorts of building materials to create homes suitable for a hibernating animal or for people. Look what fun they had using their imagination, and thank you Mrs. Muraca!

Homes from wood

Homes from bricks

Homes from legos

Homes from small wooden blocks

Homes from Lincoln Logs

 We enjoyed reading about woodland animals during centers
this week. We made words by matching ice cream cone vowels to ice cream toppers, and it was fun to sit with friends at the story CD center.

Making words

Reading about wolves

Listening center

 I sent out an email about parent/teacher conferences. I am using signup.com. which is very convenient as it allows you to choose your best time to stop by. Conferences are on the early release day on Wednesday, December 6th and take place throughout the afternoon and into the evening. I sent a hard copy too, making sure the info got out and... (oh no!) the link on the paper differed from that on the email! A correction went home today. Hope to see you there or to have a phone conference.

Next week is a short one, so no homework. You will love reading the kids Pilgrim booklets though. They are very industrious writers!

Have a wonderful weekend,
Mrs. Dagley