What is your dream?

This week, we have been learning about American Heroes.  Two in particular were Rosa Parks and MLK.  I asked the students, "What is your dream?  What would you change to make our world a better place?"  Please enjoy the sweet hearts of these children!

We voted and honored our Veterans today!

Today, we had the opportunity to celebrate and honor our Veterans. We read the book, Hero Dad to learn more about what truly makes Veterans heroes.

We also created a poster describing Veterans and why we are so thankful for them!

After discussing as a class, my students created thank you cards to give to a Veteran of their choice!

This card had thank you written on the outside and this house drawn on the inside. The author told me, "I drew this house so that when a soldier has to leave their family, maybe it would remind them of their house and their family and make them happy." This explanation melted my heart.

We talked about how Veterans are willing to fight for our freedom and rights. One of those rights is the freedom to vote. This past week, we have learned all about democracy and how it means everyone has the right to vote. Three 4th graders at OES decided to run for "OES President." We have watched videos and interviews of each candidate to help us decide who to vote for. 

Today, we voted for the candidate we felt would do the best job as OES President.

After tallying our votes, Peyton won the presidential election. We learned that the candidate with the most votes wins!

Learning all about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln

We have had a great time this week learning about famous Americans. We used a Venn diagram to compare two of our past presidents: George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

(Don't be surprised if they start pointing out each of these presidents on money!)

Also, we have been studying all about George Washington's teeth. This has been hilarious! We learned that he had rotten teeth and that they continuously fell out. This has been so much fun to write about!

We started by creating a circle map of words used to describe his teeth:

Below are some final products of our descriptive writing:

"They are yellow and brown. George Washington's teeth were rotten. All of his teeth were falling out. He had hippo teeth. I am glad my teeth are not rotten."

"George Washington's teeth were brown and yellow. The dentist gave him hippo tusks to use for his teeth. His teeth were rotten. Also, his dentist put cotton balls in his mouth. And his dentist put plastic teeth. I'm glad I do not have teeth like him." 

I was so impressed with the details they included in their illustrations!

Our trip to the Statue of Liberty

We began our lesson today by using google earth to travel to the Statue of Liberty in New York! We were amazed at how far New York is from South Carolina.

We viewed this informational video which allowed us to take a tour of Lady Liberty herself! 

 

Next, I posed the question, "How big do you think the Statue of Liberty really is?"  Most of their answers consisted of, "HUGE!!"  While this response was correct, I wanted them to have more of a tangible understanding of her size.  To do this, we used bulletin board paper to trace out the size of Lady Liberty's foot.  Can you believe that her foot is 25 feet long?  Below are a few video's showing the excitement and amazement we all had today!

 

 

 

Brandon made the suggestion that if we all put a foot on the Statue of Liberty's foot, maybe ours would be longer.  We decided to test this hypothesis.

 

After all of this research and exploration, the students recorded 3 facts in their "America the Beautiful" informational texts.  Please enjoy a few examples below: