American Symbols and Camilla Cream

Whew!!! What a week!  We finished up our unit on American Symbols.  I purchased Deanna Jump's American Symbol unit and loved it.  You can take a look at her unit (HERE) . I love to get ideas from other teachers.  The kiddos had a great time learning all about the American Flag, the bald eagle, and the Statue of Liberty. We began the unit with the flag and I found a great app that we used to find all kinds of facts.  We made an Anchor Chart together about the flag, wrote about it in our Social Studies journal and finally made a "torn" paper flag.  Here is a picture of our finished products.

Next, we learned all about the Statue of Liberty.  I downloaded the kindle e-book The Statue of Liberty (Step Into Reading.)  It was the perfect book to teach firsties about her.  After reading the book the real fun began.  We made our anchor chart and then we drew the Statue of Liberty.  It was a blast and I am so proud of what they produced.  They were proud too.  Here is a picture of some of the pictures hanging in the hall. 

Last in our unit was the bald eagle.  We read a book from our school library that taught us all kinds of things about our national bird.  Then, we made our anchor chart and our bald eagles.  They were so cute that they our now hanging in our school office. 

On a sidenote our Reading skill this week was Cause and Effect.  I embedded the video of Sean Astin reading A Bad Case of Stripes into our reading flipchart. You can find the video (HERE) . It's always a favorite.  We then created a Cause and Effect T-chart.  On the chart we listed the causes and effects that we found in the story.  The firsties then created Camilla Cream and made their own t-chart.  I found the pattern for Camilla here: (HERE).  These turned out fabulous.  Take a look!