The Christmas festivities
are finally slowing down and I was feeling a little blue today because of it. I
really miss hearing Christmas carols in stores and on the radio. I just know
that the time to take down the tree and the decorations is just around the
corner. Rob and I hit up the mall to heal our post-holiday blues and found some
relief via retail therapy. Boxing week sales-retail therapy to be exact.
I still have my big family
Christmas coming up this weekend so that helps things as well. There’s
something else that always perks me up and that’s planning and creating stuff
for my lovely little learners. I actually don’t think I’ve gone this long
before without doing any work; so even though it’s still the Christmas break, I
decided to sit down for a few hours today and get some serious work done!
I have done some very
engaging units since September and I want to keep that ball rolling. I really
wanted to do something that would appeal to my boys and what better unit of
study to throw at them than something involving huge, vicious, monstrous
creatures? Yep. Our next unit is all on dinosaurs!
I struggled for a little
bit with this idea because after all, dinosaurs are not in the Grade One
curriculum. This is where I had to figure out how to make this very
cross-curricular so that it would relate to other areas that need to be taught.
I decided to make it part of my literacy program because there’s a lot of room
for creative freedom there. I wanted to focus on non-fiction texts for both reading and
writing, so I will expose them to texts all about dinosaurs and have them write
magazine articles about the dinosaur we learn about that day.
In science, we will be
starting the Energy in our Lives unit, which will tie back nicely to our topic
of dinosaurs. After all, many people believe that a meteor and lack of sunlight
was the cause of the dinosaurs’ extinction. See how I connected the dinos to
something in the curriculum? Not too shabby, if I do say so myself. I don’t
plan on explicitly making this connection as I teach. My hope is that they will
notice it all by themselves.
From other posts, you may
know by now that once I get an exciting classroom idea in my head, it’s pretty
much all I can think about. I went to Dollarama today for batteries and instead ended
up hitting the jackpot on dinosaur items for the classroom. These will be great
toys for the kids to play with at the Storytelling Centre. I also have an idea
in the works involving the platter, green balls, and Spanish moss. Stay tuned for
that in a later post.
I plan on telling the kids
that for the month of January, they get to be paleontologists, as those are what
the scientists are called when they study dinosaurs. They love when they get an
important role, and I’m pretty confident they’ll totally dig the idea.
Ha. I’m hilarious.
On a completely different note, remember I used to do
those little “Currently” things from Oh Boy Fourth Grade? Here’s one for December.
With one day left, it’s better late than never!
Wishing everyone a fun and
safe New Years Eve! I’ll talk to you in 2014…
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