Our Place in Space: Planet Earth

After our Holiday Traditions Around the World study, we decided to learn a little more about the place in which we call home. We read a book called My Place in Space by Robin and Sally Hirst. We decided to create our very own My Place in Space Books. 

We first talked about the place we live that we call home: our houses and apartments. We learned that the city we live in is called Dayton. We illustrated and labeled the first page in our My Place in Space books with our homes. 

Next, we learned that the state we live in is called Ohio. We learned about the state flag, that the state bird of Ohio is the Cardinal, and the state tree is the Buckeye tree. We also learned that the capital of our state is Columbus, Ohio.

After learning about Ohio, we learned about the United States of America. We learned that there are 50 states in the United States of America. We had fun exploring different states on the Promethean Board. We learned that there are states in the USA that have mountains and oceans, unlike Ohio.

We then explored the seven continents. We learned that we live in the continent called North America.

Finally, we learned that the planet we live on is called Earth. We were very interested in our planet and all that it has to offer.

We learned that planet Earth is made of 70% water and 30% land. We learned that there are many different types of people, plants, and animals on Earth. We had fun exploring jungles, desserts, and ocean life by watching video clips of Planet Earth.

We created a mural of planet Earth with paint.

We even made the land 3-dimensional like on a globe.

Next, we explored the different layers of Earth. We learned that Earth has a core, mantle, and crust. We related the parts of the Earth to the parts of an apple that we learned about earlier in the school year. We used different colors of play dough to create models of the Earth.

To incorporate art into our study of planet Earth, we used an overhead projector and projected an image of Earth onto our classroom door. Together, we worked to carefully trace and paint the image onto a piece of paper. We paid very close attention to detail while working together to recreate the image. The finished project turned our beautifully!

New Year's Learning Targets

It was wonderful to welcome all of the students back to school after winter break. The students were eager to come back to school and jump right back into the swing of things. 

We were very interested in the New Years holiday. We watched the ball drop on the Promethean Board and rang in 2012 together as a class. 

We discussed what it means to have a New Year's resolution. So, we decided to make our very own New Year's resolutions for our learning. We decided to call our New Year's resolutions our New Year's Learning Targets. We each chose a learning target that we want to master in the new year. We wrote down our New Year's learning target to hold ourselves accountable for meeting our learning target. We discussed plans for how we are going to meet our learning targets. Finally, we created self-portraits and displayed our New Year's Learning Targets outside of our classroom.