Crocodiles and Alligator unit

My unit is on alligators and crocodiles. I have second grade and I am loving every minute of being with these sweet children. I was trying to find a good way to integrate social studies into my unit. I decided to have the children color a map of the world showing where alligators and crocodiles live. I will use this as an assessment tool at the end of the unit also.
I am also using an alligator craft to review greater than, less than, or equal to.

Bulletin board

Australian Enrichment Activities for Sale Week

For Sale Week, my group is doing the country of Australia. I was doing some research on different activities that we could do and I found several websites. I think these will be a great resources for our group. These lessons plans and activities would be great for any teacher that wanted to teach a unit on Australia.
http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/lesson/lesson200.shtml
http://www.atozteacherstuff.com/Themes/Australia/
http://www.proteacher.com/090070.shtml
http://australia.mrdonn.org/

Flat Lisa

In my social studies methods class, we had to make a flat representation of ourselves which was called a Flat Lisa. This activity came from the book "Flat Stanley". I had to send my flat Lisa to another state and ask someone to take a picture of the flat me in front of a place that represents that area. I chose to send my flat Lisa to Oregon where it was taken to Oregon State Univeristy. This was a really great activity that would be great for a social studies classroom lesson on diversity. I really enjoyed it and found it fascinating of how far the flat Lisa could travel that I could not. This is the picture of my Flat Lisa in front of Oregon State University.

Teaching Inspiration

Multicultural Education

Ways to incorporate multicultural education in the classroom
1. Globes and maps
2. My vacation project
3. Multicultural cookbook
4. Display research board on different cultures
5. Speakers
6. Interviews
7. Music
8. Multicultural children's books
9. Posters
10. Flat Stanley
11. Show and tell
12. Food

Federal Reserve

A woman from the federal reserve came to talk to my Social Studies methods class last week. She brought us a lot of great resources for teaching economics to older and younger children. She gave us ideas for teaching lessons using the dollar bill or other bills. She suggested teaching a unit on presidents using money because a great deal of their pictures are on our money. She also suggested talking about the different features on our bills and how the have changed the past few years. She also had a great activity for showing children what the economy was like several years ago. She suggested theatre to help explain life back then to the children because they would enjoy it and remember it better. She gave us many other things such as workbooks, fact booklets about money, and a book about the history of money and what money has looked like in the past.

Social Studies Games

I found a website titled Primary Games at    http://www.primarygames.com/social_studies.php. This website is great for children to play games and interact with social studies concepts. Some of the games on this website can help with learning capitals, presidents, and flags. Some of these games are as follows: Jamestown, World Capitals, World Flags, Fire Safety, Name that President, 50 States, World Capitals, and Transportation. The Jamestown game involves hunting artifacts and exploring. The World Flags game involves matching flags with its country; this game will eventually give a great deal of knowledge on flags. Name that President helps students learn more about our past presidents. The transportation game is mainly for younger children; it involves racing helicopters, cars, and trains to learn more about transportation. This is a great websites for teachers to use in social studies centers or even for fun time in the classroom.

Inspiration

Apples for the Teacher Website

I found a website titled Apples 4 the Teacher at                http://www.apples4theteacher.com/socialstud.html. The website is great for kids and teachers. The website can be a great resource for teachers because it provides coloring pages, stories, word searches, timelines, poetry, puzzles, and book reviews. This website is a great sight for children to play online interactive social studies games. There are games and other activities on this website that focus on the topics of presidents, community helpers, cultures around the world, fire safety and prevention, multicultural studies, U.S. government, U.S History, U.S. flags, historical figures, and world geography. This website has a featured teaching ideas section that focuses on current holidays such as for this month it focuses on the New Year, MLK Jr. Day, Black History Month, Groundhog Day, Super Bowl, Mardi Gras, Valentine’s Day, and Presidents Day. An example of an interactive activity is a puzzle activity that involves unscrambling picture puzzles. Some of these puzzles are the dollar bill, Mount Rushmore, or a famous painting. I think this website will be a great website for any elementary teacher to use in their social studies lessons.