Milk Carton Communities, Map Skills and a FREEBIE!

TGI{almost}F! I am so ready for a three day weekend! This week has flown by, just as this new school year has! We have been having a lot of fun with our 2nd graders :) This is going to be a big old social studies/geography post!

We have been learning about different communities and have started our mapping skills! We read the story Iris and Walter from our basal to learn the difference between the city and country. Then we learned the fancy names to describe those communties: urban and rural! {I just love hearing our sweeties say "rural!"} We read another story from our basal called I Like Where I Am because it let the students see the suburbs! We made venn diagrams and sorted descriptions of each community on our bulletin board.

 

Then we made our adorable milk carton communities, which was a big hit. It looks like our skyscrapers are blowing in the wind, whoops :)

 

Cute, right?! Today we started our mapping skills and went over map titles and map keys. We mapped our milk carton communities and the kids did a great job!

 

 

For the next few days we will be working on mapping skills. We will read the book Mapping Penny's World and the kiddos will each make a map of our classroom! Then they will work in small groups and use my Mapping Our World! freebie to make a map of a town! This really allows them to work on their cardinal directions. Pick up your FREE copy by clicking on the picture below :) You can totally tell I made this back at the start of my TpT days! HA!







If you download this, let me know what you think! Enjoy your three day weekend, friends :)

Mapping Our World! {Freebie!}

Hey all! I hope everyone has has had a great week! It feels like fall here today and I am LOVING it!! We have started working on plants this week, but I have not taken photos yet, so I will share a quick activity we did last week with our mapping skills! {Get the FREEBIE at the end of the post!}

 

Before we really started mapping, we read

It's a cute story that is a wonderful intro to mapping skills! It teaches all the parts of a map {title, map key, compass rose, etc.} It also teaches about different kinds of maps. We practiced our directions, taught them "Never Eat Sour Watermelons," and made some maps together as a class.

 

Then I typed up some directions, and as a group they had to make a map of a community. They had to come up with a title, draw the compass rose, and come up with the symbols for their map key. Then they had to follow the checklist of directions to construct their map! They did an awesome job!

 

 

 

 

Click HERE to get your mapping activity FREEBIE {You get the directions to construct the map, a blank map key and blank title template}.

 

Be sure to follow my store and leave a rating if you download! Have a wonderful weekend, friends!

MIA lately.... PLUS Communities, Apples, Voting {new TpT items!!}

Hi blog friends. I have been MIA lately. In fact, I have not been to school this week, due to some personal things going on in my life. I am going back to school tomorrow, but will be taking it easy {hopefully I can get a big chunk of our kiddos Dibel-ed}.  All I have to say is thank goodness for my wonderful friend Amy and the fact that we are team teaching this year. She has been a life saver this week.

 

They have been working on communities this week. Since I was not there, I do not have photos, but you can see some of the stuff they did in my post last year. Just picture two streets in the suburban community and twice as many skyscrapers! Amy said the kids had so much fun :) I can't wait to see their communities tomorrow!

 

It's about that time for Apple Thematic Units! I cannot wait until we start our Apple theme in the next couple of weeks! I have some apple themed math journal prompts in my little store. Be sure to pick up a copy by clicking HERE or clicking the picture below.

And I know its a couple months away, but I made a fun mini packet for the upcoming election! Pick up your copy HERE or clicking the picture below.

Communities

The first two and a half weeks of school have been awesome! I absolutely love my class-they are the sweetest kiddos! They are making it so easy to implement Daily 5 and I just know it's going to be a fantastic year! I will write about how Daily 5 is going in a future post :)

The past week or two we have been focusing on communities and mapping skills for social studies. We have read these stories from our basal to help compare the characteristics of different kinds of communities:

 

I am still trying to learn that I can LET GO OF THE BASAL while doing Daily 5, but these two stories went really well with communities. We have been comparing urban, suburban and rural. They loooved seeing my photos from NYC and Chicago, too! Many of them had no idea just how big a city could actually be!

 I made this bulletin board and we sorted out the different characteristics of each community:

Then, we made our own model of the different communities using milk cartons! The model turned out so cute, and I think they really got it! :) (This is a photo of my friend Amy's class' model-I forgot to take a picture of ours and had already let my kiddos take their buildings home!)

So stinkin' cute, right? :) The following day, we started our mapping skills. We made a map of our model. We learned that we needed a title for our maps, as well as a map key!

We will continue our mapping skills this week. We will read

and the kiddos will have homework-make a map of their bedroom! They will have to include a title and at least 5 symbols in their map key. I can't wait to see what they come up with!

Hope everyone has a great rest of the weekend!