African Safari

The final summer school class I taught this year was "African Safari".  I was really excited about teaching this class for the first time this year.  Each summer I travel to Tanzania, East Africa so Africa is a place I love very much.  I couldn't wait to share with my students some of the wonderful things about this place that has become such a part of who I am.

Each day we covered a country and an animal found in Africa.  The countries we learned about were; Algeria, Botswana, South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria, and Madagascar.  The animals we learned about were; lions, cheetahs, cape buffaloes, hippos, giraffes, zebras, monkeys, elephants, and hyenas.  Our local library had some great books about these countries and animals that were on my students' level.



One craft we made was a paper-mache globe.....this was to help the students grasp the concept of where the continent of Africa is in relationship to where North America is.  I got the template for the continents from this website.

The following are pictures of some of the crafts we made during the two weeks:

I got several of these ideas from these great websites:

PBWorks

Home School Creations

Yummy Worm

Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas

All Kids Network

Learn Create Love

DLTK-Kids

No Time for Flash Cards

I also tried to teach the kids some Swahili.  This is the language they speak in Tanzania and Kenya.  The next time I teach this class I really want to do a better job at teaching the kids Swahili.  

Well that is the end of summer school 2012!  It was a busy summer to say the least, but one that I really enjoyed.  I got to meet a lot of great new kids.....teach some things that I don't normally get to teach during the school year......and even step out of my box a little bit and teach preschool!  I had mixed emotions about summer school ending......it had been so much fun, but at the same time it was EXHAUSTING!  I'm pretty sure I was the only teacher that was ready for regular school to start back! We had a two week break between when summer school ended and the fall semester started.....I originally thought I would have those two weeks off, but during the summer I got some great news......I was going to be hired full time at The Capitol School.  The Hill/Box cluster had outgrown our one room and now we were going to be able to occupy two rooms.  So I spent the two week break moving into my new room!  I will create a post later on about my new room and the changes that have come to the Hill/Box cluster this year!

Soaring Through the Solar System

The third summer school class I taught was called "Soaring Through the Solar System".  This class I taught to the 5-7 year old age group in the mornings and then in the afternoons I taught this class to the preschool. These two weeks are pretty much a blur......I taught for 10 hours a day (without a single break)....so I'm pretty proud I survived!  I had never taught preschool before and was pretty intimidated about it at first, but it ended up being a lot of fun.  Teaching preschool is VERY different from teaching my 5-7 year-olds.  Some of my preschool kids were only 2....so even though I was teaching the same subject I still had to pretty much create all new activities.


By this point in the summer my camera was completely dead.....so I don't have any pictures of my kids actually doing the activities.....the pictures that are posted on this blog are ones I found from the different blogs and other websites where I found the ideas to do these crafts.  Sorry I don't have any actual photos of my students doing these, but I'll try to do the best with what I have!


For both classes we started the first day by talking about the sun....then days 2-9 we learned about planet a day....and finally on the last day we learned about astronauts and why Pluto is no longer a planet.



Day 1: The Sun
The first day we began by talking about the sun.  My goal for both classes was to teach them a few facts about the sun (such as it is a star, all the planets rotate around it.....it is pretty big etc.).  For some reason one of my preschool students didn't grasp the concept that the sun isn't a planet....and according to her dad, she is still argues with him when he says the sun isn't a planet!

This is the craft we made when we learned about the sun.  I got the idea from a blog you can check out for yourself here. 

Days 2-9: The Planets

We started with the planet closest to the sun, Mercury, and then continued until we covered all the planets.  To help the kids remember some things about the planets we learned the song "The Family of the Sun".  Each day we would add a new verse until we learned the entire song.  I changed the song a little bit....the song was written when Pluto was still a planet so I changed that.  Here are the lyrics:

Chorus:

The family of the sun,

the family of the sun,

there are eight planets,

in the family of the sun.

Mercury is hot,

and Mercury is small.

Mercury has no air to breathe;

it's just a rocky ball.

Chorus

Venus has thick clouds,

that hide what is below.

The air is foul; the ground is hot.

It rotates very slow.

Chorus

We love the Earth, our home,

its oceans and its trees.

We eat its food, we breathe its air,

so no pollution, please.

Chorus

Mars is very red.

It's also dry and cold.

Some day you might visit Mars,

if you are really bold.

Chorus

Great Jupiter is huge

We've studied it a lot.  

We've found that it has lots of moons

and a big red spot.

Chorus

Saturn has great rings.

We wondered what they were.

Now we know their icy rocks.

Which we saw as a blur.

Chorus

Uranus is big.

Its cold and greenish-blue.

We've found it rotates sideways

and has rings around it too.

Chorus

Neptune's far away.

Its cold and green and blue.

The planet has a lot of clouds

and rings around it to.

Chorus

The song is to the tune of the farmer and then dale and the original version of the song can be found here.  

The day we learned about the Earth we made this little craft.  Our goal for that day was to learn about how the earth travels around the sun and the moon travels around the earth.  I think this activity did a great job of showing that.  I found this activity on Pinterest.....a link to the blog can be found here.

We also made this book to help the students remember the planets in order from the sun.  I got the idea from this website, but I changed ours a bit.

Some other great activities for a unit on the solar system can be found at these websites:

Education.com

Nurturing the Tender Years

Kreative in Kinder

I Heart Crafty Things

Deceptively Educational

TPT

Calling All Authors and Illustrators

The second class of the summer that I taught was called "Calling All Authors and Illustrators".  In this class we learned about some famous authors and illustrators of children's books.  This is always one of my favorite classes because I love literature so much.  It really is a struggle for me each year to fit in all of the great authors and illustrators into just two short weeks.  I'm pretty sure I could spend an entire two weeks on each author/illustrator, but this time we learned about just a few......Dr. Seuss, Patricia Polacco, Jan Brett, Ezra Jack Keats, Shel Silverstein, Eric Carle, Margaret Wise Brown, Maurice Sendak, Tomie dePaola and Chris Van Allsburg.  Again it was EXTREMELY hard for me to pick only a few authors and illustrators, but there wasn't much I could do about it!  Thankfully my school has the scholastic series of books on DVDs and the kids were able to watch some of the books on DVD during lunch.......this helped us fit in a few extra!

The schedule for the two weeks was that we would cover an author/illustrator each day.....I would begin by showing the students some pictures of the person and giving them some biographical information.  Then we would read a few stories and create some sort of craft.  Thanks to Pinterest I was able to find some really great activities for the kids to do!

This was my bulletin for this class.....it is kind of hard to tell but it says "authors and illustrators" and in the hat is the famous Dr. Seuss quote "Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive that is Youer than You".

Here are a few activities we did when we learned about Dr. Seuss.

When we read One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish we had colored goldfish and did a sorting and graphing activity.

When we read The Cat in The Hat we made these little puppets and also made cute hats out of tissue paper.....these turned out adorable!

Probably my favorite little Dr. Seuss craft we did was our Horton.  We read the book Horton Hears a Who and then we made these little elephants out of toilet paper rolls.  I was really surprised how cute these turned out!!  Note to self or anyone else that is thinking about doing this craft.......it took about 3 times as long as I thought it would take!

When we learned about Jan Brett we read The Mitten and then made our own mittens and filled them with the animals from the story.

We also read The Keeping Quilt by Patricia Polacco.  For this activity we made our own quilts.  I went to Michaels (who just so happened to have all of their scrapbook paper 50% off!!) and got several different types of scrapbook paper.  Then I cut them into two inch squares and had the students glue the squares onto a piece of card stock.

My great-grandmother (who died before I was born) loved to quilt.  I think she quilted more than anyone else I have ever known about.....I mean we're talking a serious quilter here!  Anyway she made enough quilts that I have 5 of hers (she had over 7 great-grandchildren and we all got that many.....not to mention how many our parents and grandparents got!).  These quilts are one of my most valued possessions.....especially now since I have started quilting myself.  I brought one of the quilts she made (this one is actually my cousins...who is my roommate) to show the students how quilts are pieced together.  I was really surprised at how much the kids loved getting to look at this quilt.  They came up to it and touched it so gently.....I even had a few that remarked on how good it smelled!  I was so happy to be able to share something like this with my students!  I think it would have made my grandmother very proud!

The finished project.

When we studied Eric Carle we got to do a lot of cute crafts.  This one was for The Very Lonely Firefly.  I love how this student added his own drawings to the face of the dragonfly!

When we read The Grouchy Ladybug the kids created their own grouchy ladybugs.  I took pictures of the kids faces (I told them to make a mean face.....some of them were hilarious!) and then I cut them out and glued them onto their ladybugs.

This was for when we read The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

We had several other cute projects, but for some reason my phone and camera started acting up this summer so I lost a lot of the pictures that I took.  

We also talked about the writing process and even made our own class book.  We based our book off Bill Martin Jr.'s Brown Bear Brown Bear......I was so impressed with the students on how they were able to make the story fit together.  Again I wish I had pictures to show of that because it really was great, but oh well....hopefully by the time I teach this class again I will have a new camera!