Idaho History Week 2: Lewis & Clark
This week went by rather well, although we did go over time wise.
Also, planning and putting things together took forever. I think it’s
because I was a bit intimidated with the subject matter. I wasn’t
comfortable shoving an entire study on Lewis and Clark into one hour.
Every lesson plan that I came across was 6-7 weeks worth of information.
Shortening it and cropping it to fit my needs was really hard. I think
I finally came up with a good compromise. And it was more informative
than I originally thought it would be.
My advice on this though is to PLAN AHEAD!!
First I needed to come up with something for their folders. And right away I thought of a lapbook mini-book. I had planned on one for the entire lesson and was trying to work with that. Well that wasn’t working. I couldn’t figure out how to put so much information into a single lapbook. Especially when many of the kids in the class were resistant to writing. So I came up with a combination of mini-books that would cover some of the important information.
My next bit of a problem was getting this information to them. I only had so many books from the library and none of them were the same book! So it would have been hard to go page by page and share the information that way. So I finally decided on a movie. Though it wasn’t a “historical fiction” type of movie and it was more along the lines of a re-enacted documentary, the kids did find some interesting facts. The movie was “Lewis and Clark, Journey through the Centuries” And the first “jump forward” on the DVD after you start it happened to be where they are just entering into Idaho. So that is where I began our video. We watched for about 20 mins. Again, this was almost too long as I was beginning to loose them. So we started our lapbooks and reviewed the information as we put them together and glued them into our folders.
here are the links to the lapbooks that we used.
3 of the mini books I used from here: http://dynamic2moms.webs.com/lewisandclark.htm I used “the mission,” “the time-line,” and “the map” pieces. The map though I cut off the green part as it just wouldn’t fit.
I then took some of her ideas and changed them to fit with my plans. I wanted the members of the corps to be reviewed, but I didn’t want a whole page on them in our folders so I created a SMALL pocket and made little “trading” cards for each of the members. I also made sure that we would have a “who is who” answer for the back of each card. Some even had blanks to fill in so that the kids would have to think to figure out who was really who.
Here is a pdf of the corps members:
Here is a pdf of the answers for the back (Also contains the timeline answers and the answer to the mission mini-book)
Keep in mind that the Trading cards really are VERY SMALL. Some other things to keep in mind were that I had ALMOST everything cut out. Hind sight though tells me that I should have had them all cut out (answers too!) and had them fully assembled and ready to glue them in. The kids lost a lot of comprehension I think because they were so concerned with what goes where and how==then they were remembering who was who. The time crunch really played a part in this. Next week I will have everything fully assembled so that we can take our time going over the information.
At this point we needed a bit of fun. The kids were tired of thinking and we were running out of time. Though I wish I had just 20 more mins!
Hands on Project The hands on project that I chose was to cover a note pad to make a journal. One thing about both Lewis and Clark is that they both carried a journal. They were Hide bound with leather ties to keep it closed. Now I didn’t have leather to work with–though I thought I had a box still out in the shed! So I used simple felt cut into a size that was large enough to cover the notepad on the bottom, and the top with a bit hanging over to overlap. I then had them cut out a small hole to tie the ribbon to and then used the ribbon to tie it closed. to keep the note pad in the cover, I used a piece of velcro to affix it to the back of the cover. You can then change the notepad by adding a new piece of velcro to the new note pad.
My advice on this though is to PLAN AHEAD!!
First I needed to come up with something for their folders. And right away I thought of a lapbook mini-book. I had planned on one for the entire lesson and was trying to work with that. Well that wasn’t working. I couldn’t figure out how to put so much information into a single lapbook. Especially when many of the kids in the class were resistant to writing. So I came up with a combination of mini-books that would cover some of the important information.
My next bit of a problem was getting this information to them. I only had so many books from the library and none of them were the same book! So it would have been hard to go page by page and share the information that way. So I finally decided on a movie. Though it wasn’t a “historical fiction” type of movie and it was more along the lines of a re-enacted documentary, the kids did find some interesting facts. The movie was “Lewis and Clark, Journey through the Centuries” And the first “jump forward” on the DVD after you start it happened to be where they are just entering into Idaho. So that is where I began our video. We watched for about 20 mins. Again, this was almost too long as I was beginning to loose them. So we started our lapbooks and reviewed the information as we put them together and glued them into our folders.
here are the links to the lapbooks that we used.
3 of the mini books I used from here: http://dynamic2moms.webs.com/lewisandclark.htm I used “the mission,” “the time-line,” and “the map” pieces. The map though I cut off the green part as it just wouldn’t fit.
I then took some of her ideas and changed them to fit with my plans. I wanted the members of the corps to be reviewed, but I didn’t want a whole page on them in our folders so I created a SMALL pocket and made little “trading” cards for each of the members. I also made sure that we would have a “who is who” answer for the back of each card. Some even had blanks to fill in so that the kids would have to think to figure out who was really who.
Here is a pdf of the corps members:
Here is a pdf of the answers for the back (Also contains the timeline answers and the answer to the mission mini-book)
Keep in mind that the Trading cards really are VERY SMALL. Some other things to keep in mind were that I had ALMOST everything cut out. Hind sight though tells me that I should have had them all cut out (answers too!) and had them fully assembled and ready to glue them in. The kids lost a lot of comprehension I think because they were so concerned with what goes where and how==then they were remembering who was who. The time crunch really played a part in this. Next week I will have everything fully assembled so that we can take our time going over the information.
At this point we needed a bit of fun. The kids were tired of thinking and we were running out of time. Though I wish I had just 20 more mins!
Hands on Project The hands on project that I chose was to cover a note pad to make a journal. One thing about both Lewis and Clark is that they both carried a journal. They were Hide bound with leather ties to keep it closed. Now I didn’t have leather to work with–though I thought I had a box still out in the shed! So I used simple felt cut into a size that was large enough to cover the notepad on the bottom, and the top with a bit hanging over to overlap. I then had them cut out a small hole to tie the ribbon to and then used the ribbon to tie it closed. to keep the note pad in the cover, I used a piece of velcro to affix it to the back of the cover. You can then change the notepad by adding a new piece of velcro to the new note pad.
Items needed:
Ribbon (about 12 inches)
Felt piece (I cut each of the sheets in 1/2 for the size needed)
Notepad (I just used a 3×5 *aprox* scratch pad)
velro strip
(UPDATE (3/10/2015): I will be using Super Glue this time as it will work better I think.)
Ribbon (about 12 inches)
Felt piece (I cut each of the sheets in 1/2 for the size needed)
Notepad (I just used a 3×5 *aprox* scratch pad)
velro strip
(UPDATE (3/10/2015): I will be using Super Glue this time as it will work better I think.)