We finished up with our nutrition unit last week. We read an online reading of the book “Jack and the Hungry Giant” on YouTube. Afterwards, as an extension activity, students illustrated the foods that Jack and the giant picked for their meal.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0p5Oh6Gkfc]
Finally students got to create healthy plates with foods that they would like. They had to pick foods from every food group.
First we read the story “There Was And Old Lady Who Swallowed a Turkey”, talked about the different thanksgiving food she ate and what food group they belonged to. Then we created models of ourselves, with pictures of the things the old lady swallowed glued to our “stomachs”, in the correct sequence order.
This week in our reading program we’ve been learning about plants, and the letter f.
So to celebrate we learned about the parts of a flower, even though we usually talk about this during spring time. We started off watching a few videos on plants growing and we sang the song “Flower, Stem, Leaves, and Roots” a song sung to the tune of “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes”.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d26AhcKeEbE][youtube http://youtu.be/sXrnHff2Kjc]
Then we did a cut and paste activity by labeling parts of a flower and decorating our flower.
Then as Thanksgiving draws closer, for math, we read the story Countdown to Thanksgiving and practiced our number recognition as we read the book. To celebrate the letter F we talked about our favorite thanksgiving foods and made a graph about what food group the food belongs to.
As Thanksgiving approaches we’ve been learning about food, food groups, and nutrition. Our district’s itinerant art teacher came to visit our little village of Shaktoolik. She talked about what kind of food we can find outside with our own hands when the store in the village is closed.
We talked about how we can hunt moose, go fishing, and shoot geese. Students all learned that moose, fish, and geese, are all in the meat food groups. Many students also answered they can pick berries and learned that berries are in the fruits food group. Then we started making hand mobiles that showed a few things we can get from the “store outside the door”.
Students started by tracing their hand on a special soft metal and making designs on the hand, and then filling them in with a special ink that filled only into the cracks of the metal, and then we cut out the hand designs.
Then students drew two items that they could get with their own hands instead of buying it in the store. We picked berries and salmon fish. Children drew the designs in ink and then colored the images with special oil crayons that turned into paint when added with water. She finished her visit with singing a rendition of our favorite Raffi song “Apples and Bananas” and playing on her banjo!
Then as a class at the end of the week we’ve been working on food pyramid plates. Students have been finding pictures of food and adding them to the correct spots on the food pyramid.
To celebrate the letter P, and to start off our food and nutrition theme; we read our new poem called Pancakes. Students practiced reading the poem by using their finger for tracking. Throughout the week well continue to learn the poem and practice our fluency. Then as a class we looked for rhyming words in the poem and created our own stack of pancakes.
Moving on from the fall harvest unit we talked about where food comes from. Students learned that food doesn’t just come from the store but much of our food that we eat comes from farms. We watched Sesame Street visit to a farm (since there are no farms out here in rural Alaska).
We then discussed the main idea of the movie (there are many foods that can come from farms), and illustrated the key details we saw in the video in a web graphic organizer.
Today we read the story Click Clack Moo: Cow’s That Type discussed cause and effect. We then created an emergent reader book talking about what other animals on the farm might want.
