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SOCIAL STUDIES |
How To: Because there are only five subject categories (to correspond to the five days of the week), many different topics are included under Social Studies. Each story presented has been identified according to the geographic area. Often the culture of that area is discussed. Making a flag is recommended as an interesting and informative activity. Geography also includes the mention of oceans, continents and geographic regions. (An excellent illustrated children's geography book is Rand McNally's Picture Atlas of the World, illustrated by Brian Delf. You'll find it informative and fun!) Under the topic Social Studies, you will also find lessons about cities, small town life, minority ethnic groups, occupations and discovering our own unique gifts. In addition, the Social Studies unit includes History. Under this heading, you will see lessons which create opportunities to discuss subjects such as Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Klondike, Davey Crockett, the American Revolution and the 4th of July. Social Studies also includes lessons about people and their relationships to one another. In this category, you'll find subjects such as traditions, hospitality, relatives, character traits and emotions, just to name a few. As you can see, there is much included under Social Studies. Choose the topics you'd like to discuss and either mark them in Five in a Row or write them on the Planning Sheet under whichever day it seems best to cover them. If you use the Planning Sheets, be sure when presenting the material, to tie it in to the story, citing the reference page in the story book and adding your lesson conversationally. Sample Lesson: Here's a sample Social Studies lesson taken from Lentil by Robert McCloskey. Each Monday you'll find lessons designed to help children understand what it would be like to have lived when and where the story takes place. Social Studies: Small Town Life Discuss the small town of Alto, Ohio. Contract Alto with your student's own town. Is it larger or smaller? Have your student use building blocks to lay out the town of Alto on the floor. Alternatively, have them draw the town on a large piece of paper or poster board. Help your student label each of the buildings named in McCloskey's story. Let your student draw each of the streets and alleys. (You may need to define alley for him, since many towns today no longer have alleys.) Take a toy train or make one from blocks or cardboard and let the student act out the story of Lentil using clothespin characters. Initiate a discussion about what life is like in a small town. Interesting topics might include shopping, restaurants, crime, gangs, schools, traffic, etc. Compare and contrast these differences of life in a small town versus a big city. The Story Disks: Each book contains a sheet of story disks and these are also available as a separate resource, colored and laminated. These are quick, symbolic representations of the titles included in Five in a Row. They may be used to make a Literary Map. First, color the disk and put the name of the book on the back of the disk. For greater durability, laminate the disks before you cut them apart. Now take a large map of the world (a laminated map is more durable) and by placing a Velcro dot on the disk and the other dot on the map where it goes, you can quickly take it off and put it back on each day. Teacher's tacky putty will also work, and you or the student can locate the disk and attach it daily. Eventually you will be able to track the stories you have read all over the world. Even young students will learn some map basics. Any stories with fictitious settings can be placed in the margins of the map as the "Land of Make Believe". |