It is hard to believe that we have finished our 6th project block! This past month, Constellation students enjoyed learning about how civilizations are formed and eventually created their own civilizations!
In order to understand how places have evolved, it is important to understand how to read and follow maps. We started by focusing in on our own place on the map. Kids made mini-books that zoomed in on where their home is in relation to their street, their street's location in the neighborhood, and their neighborhood's location in their city/town, state and finally country!
Students had a lot of fun learning about the different regions of the United States. After reading a book about different features and landmarks in the different regions, students picked a region and created a brochure about that region. In the brochure, we included information about types of weather that region experiences, popular sports or music from the area, and of course, regional cuisines!
After spending some time learning about the USA, we expanded into continents. We played a really fun game called "Roll a Continent", where each continent was given a number. If you roll that number, you have to put a marker on that continent!
Next we moved into learning a bit about ancient civilizations. We know how ancient civilizations operated because scientists called archaeologists are able to dig for artifacts and make inferences about how the artifacts were used. The kids practiced using some archaeology tools like tweezers, brushes, dowels and magnifying glasses to extract chocolate chips from cookies. Students commented that it must be hard to be an archaeologist because often it is difficult not to damage the surrounding area while digging!
An ancient civilization that students were very interested in was Egypt. We decided to read about how ancient Egyptians lived. After learning about the mummification process, kids created mummies and sarcophagi. Many students put other items in their sarcophagus, as we learned that many ancient Egyptians were buried with their most prized possessions!
We also enjoyed practicing writing in hieroglyphics, the written language of the ancient Egyptians. Students were even inspired to create their own special alphabet!
Now that we were experts on ancient civilizations, and what a civilization needs to operate, we were ready to create our own civilizations. We read books like I Need My Own Country by Rick Walton and Weslandia by Paul Fleischman as inspiration. Students began by planning out the grids of their civilizations (we had practiced following map grids earlier in the project block). They also brainstormed the types of clothing people would wear (weather played a role in deciding what type of clothing would be best), food citizens like to eat (which sometimes depended on what crops could grow there), and games people enjoy playing in their civilization. With all of that information in mind, kids created crests and flags to honor their unique civilizations!
To wrap up all of our hard work, we headed to Pretend City! It was a blast working in the different stores in the community and helping the city to continue operating!
We even had time to create a beautiful castle that was our civilization "home-base"!
Next up-- Animal advocacy and pet care! :)
Is this class GT because I am
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