Around the World: India- Diwali lamps

To finish my classes trip to India we celebrated Diwali.  This included making our own diwali lamps.

We used Crayola air dried clay and then painted them.  Next year I will use the terra cotta colred kind, it would look more like the lamps.

Around the World: India

Our next stop on our journey around the world is India.  India was big hit with my class last year and this year was the same, they loved it! They loved learning about Diwali, peacocks, hendi tattoos, and so on.  To start off here was my display for India:

I had two saris, a stuffed peacock, a doll dressed in a sari, peacock feathers, a neat book/kit on Henna tattoos, a little Genesh statue, a diwali lamp, and an elephant figurine.

One of the things the kids liked the best were the rangoli designs.  The students loved seeing the beautiful rangoli designs I found on the internet and we then went outside to do our own.  We used sidewalk chalk instead of rice or sand and the kids had fun.  Here are some pictures of them:

 

I will update with more pics later.  Next up- Holidays around the world!

50th day of school 2012

We had our 50th day of school this last week.  I didn't have as many dress up this year, but we had it after a long weekend so many of the kids forgot.  We still had fun though with hulu hoops, fifties toys, and a sock hop/ coke floats in the gym.  Here are some pictures.

Next up on my around the world is India with rangolis, peacocks, and Diwali!

Around the World: Chile Rain Sticks

 

Hello all. We are continue with our study of South America with a stop in Chile. This week we made rain sticks out of paper towel rolls, foil, construction paper, and beans. The kids really liked making the rain sticks and thought it was cool that they are made out of dried out cactus. Here are some pictures.

 

Organizing handwriting

At my school we do Handwriting Without Tears, http://www.hwtears.com/hwt .  The school adopted it last year but myself and another teacher piloted the program the year before.  I have really liked it and I think it has been a big help and improvement over years past handwriting.  In the program the students have books they write in but they also have chalk boards and wood peices to make the letters.  The wood peices come in boxes and there are enough wood peices in each box for about 3-4 kids, depending on the letter you are doing.  I had the boxes labeled with a number and the pieces in them with the same number, but it still took a lot of time for the kids to get out pieces.  It was the same for the chalk boards, once you got out the boards, chalk, sponges, and rags it took time.  This year is different.  I go the ideas for organizing my handwriting from one of my fellow teachers and it is working wonderfully.  The wood pieces are out of the boxes; they are still labeled but now there are bags for each student with enough wood pieces for any letter.  The bags are in tubs for each table.  The boards are in containers with the chalk and rags for each table. I did the same for the workbooks.   Each tub and container are labeled for each table.  So far it has cut down on pass out time considerably and is much more organized.  Here are some pictures:

Here is the shelf with all the tubs for the books, wood pieces, and chalk boards.

These are the containers for the chalk boards

Inside look

The bags with the wood pieces

Around the world: South America

My next stop on my around the world tour is South America, looking at Brazil and Chile.  Both are new this year and I am really excited for both.  We just started and the kids are really liking it.  Here is my display for Chile and Brazil:

It contains a guiro rasp, Easter Island statue head, hat, rain stick, llama, parrot, carved bowl, both flags, and a cute brazilian jungle play set I found on amazon.
We started with the Amazon rain forest.  We learned about the 4 layers to the forest and the animals found there.  For an art project the kids made their own forest pictures.  The used tussue paper for the tree leaves, yarn for vines, and I found these cute frog and monkey shapes at Hobby Lobby.  (The frog is too big but looked cute.)  The kids really liked making them and did a great job.

More to come on including Easter Island statues and rain sticks.

Around the World class decorations, study

I have done an around the world study of countries with my class for the last two years.  I really enjoy it and the kids love learning about the other countries.  I found a lot of lesson ideas online but I also found this great book http://www.amazon.com/Children-Around-World-Countries-Languages/dp/1933052376/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1347768211&sr=8-10&keywords=field+trip+around+the+world that gave me great ideas and a jumping off point.  I also used these books for ideas: http://www.amazon.com/Around-World-Coloring-Dover-History/dp/0486439836/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1347768170&sr=8-8&keywords=around+the+world and http://www.amazon.com/Around-World-Art-Activities-Continents/dp/1885593457/ref=sr_1_15?ie=UTF8&qid=1347768170&sr=8-15&keywords=around+the+world .

This year I decided to have a decoration theme to my room. I have seen so many teachers do and I never did, but this year I decided to do it. I have had a bulletin board of kids around the world but this year I added to it and made it bigger:

I gotta say finding around the world stuff was difficult; the places I looked online and in the stores nearest me had pretty much nothing.  I have seem tons of frogs, lizards, and weird monsters but not around the world (or fairy tales, my other favorite but that is another post :)) I found the larger kids on Amazon and the smaller kids were an old set my mother had.  The little world was found at Knowledge Bound. 

For my students hanger name cards I decided to try and find something world themed but had no luck. So I took plain white index cards and put some passport type stamps on them that I found online. ( I do not remember the site at the moment but I will try and find it.) I put two on each card and then wrote the child's name on them.

When I do my around the world study with my kids I like to have a little display for the country we are studying.  I am slowly building collections for each one and right now some are better than others.  We are on Germany at the moment (new this year) and it is small but I hope to add to it.  It is on one of my shelves next to one of my maps, here is an example:

It has a nutcracker, flags, a cuckoo clock, hat, and lederhosen for the country.  I will update for each country. 

For our back to school night each teacher always has some sort of display outside their rooms with the students names.  I tried to find something around the world that I didn't already have up but no luck.  So I made a poster of a world with poster board, blue paper and continents I printed out that said Welcome Worldwide Learners! on it and had the children's names on little passports I copied from my Children Around the world book above on different colors of paper. 



I also had two welcome banners outside of my room that had flags of the world all over them; one said welcome in English and the other said welcome in different languages, I found it here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004X0QI1S/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00 . I think they are outside banners bu they looked fine and fold up nicely for next year.