Treasure Hunters - Civil War & Age of Industry

10/28/14

FOCUS: The Civil War- Battle of Gettysburg- soldiers and nurses
EXPLORE: playing with doctors' kits
LITERATURE: "Gettysburg" by James Bow and "You Wouldn't Want to be a Nurse During the American Civil War" by Kathryn Senior
MUSIC: continued with our surprise song, reviewed rhythms of half note, quarter note, eighth note, sixteenth note, quarter rest, and half rest.  
PROJECT: cutting soldier paper figures for boys and nurse figures for girls.   Medical kits to emphasize helping. 

QUESTIONS to ask your child: What were the northern and southern states fighting about?  (slavery).  

11/4/14

FOCUS: Age of Industry
EXPLORE: three groups build machines (a blender with gears, a rubber band powered car, and a well with pulley).  
LITERATURE: Viewed illustrations of mills and looms in "The Bobbin Girl" by Emily Arnold McCully and read "Marvelous Mattie: How Margaret E. Knight became an inventor" by Emily Arnold McCulley.  Kids also viewed pictures of mills in Manchester.  The class discussed simple machines (inclined plane, lever, pulley, wheel and axle, and screw) while presenting each group's discovery project.  We talked about  Manchester's role in the textile industry and watched a model waterfall turn a turbine to explain power behind simple machines. 
PROJECT: Children colored a picture of a mill building and made a "Simple Machines" board with examples (TO GO HOME NEXT WEEK).  
QUESTIONS to ask your child: What powered the mills in Manchester? (Water, River, or Waterfall).  What did they make in the mills?  Was the cloth made "by hand" or "by machine" ?  

We are loving these kids-  They are such a joy to learn with each week! 

Treasure Hunters 9/16/2014

Focus: The Erie Canal

Explore table: Which items sink or float?
Literature/Listen:
We read the Amazing Impossible Erie Canal by Cheryl Harness.
We discussed how the canal was dug and what it did for trade. In addition the children dug their own canal using sand and toothpicks as shovels- hard work!
Music:
We continued learning about rhythms through words and clapping. This week
we learned a new note- three eighths note ( silly word- pineapple). The children listened to the song "Erie Canal" and continued learning their special song.

Questions to ask this week: What was the Erie Canal? A long pathway of water that was dug from Buffalo to Albany, NY.  Why was it built? To help the trade and selling of goods

Treasure Hunters and Eli Whitney

Eli Whitney- Inventor of the Cotton Gin (and interchangeable gun parts)

Focus:  Eli Whitney and inventions

Explore table:  tinker toys, erector sets, wheels and gears, screw board

Literature/Listen:  The children listened to an excerpt of the Story of the World (v3) on Eli Whitney's life and we read from the Discover the Life of an Inventor series:  Eli Whitney by Gaines.   Slavery was briefly discussed, (taking a person from their homeland, making them work for free, likely not treating them nicely).

Project:  The children colored a portrait of Eli Whitney and made model cotton gins.  We also discussed and pointed out North America on the globe, as well as identified Florida and traced fingers up the coast to NH. (and Massachusetts where Eli Whitney was born).

Music:  The children were introduced to the concept of rhythm through various songs/clapping.  They learned the value of a quarter note and rest and an eighth note using hand motions and the silly words blue, jel-lo, and (whispered) rest.   We worked on learning a song (surprise!).


Questions to ask your child throughout the week:
"What does a Cotton Gin do?"  (separates seeds from cotton) "Who invented it?" (Eli Whitney) "Why?" (because it took a long time to pick the seeds out).

Wonderful week!   Enthusiastic kids!
-Winnie