Castles and DragonsFocus Question of the Week:
December 1, 2008
Compare Seven and Three.
Fins, Fur and Feathers.
Calling all young
zoologists! Classify animals through the use of dichotomous keys.
After studying animal habitats and adaptations, try your hand at creating your
own animal. This is the "purr-fect" unit for animal lovers!
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Build
It! Festival. 
In this unit, we will work on developing our mathematical terminology as we slide, flip and rotate through math. Students will experiment with pattern blocks, tangrams, and other manipulatives to create designs and tessellations. We will explore the way geometric shapes are used in the real world.
Castles and Dragons
We're
learning about castles! How and why were castles built? Who lived
there? We'll answer these questions and more.
We began our journey to the days of King Arthur by learning how a coat of arms helped identify knights on the battlefield. Each student selected colors and animals based on their meanings, found out which symbol was needed for their mark of cadency and chose the method of dividing their shield. These were combined to create their own unique coats of arms. They did a remarkable job!
Don't you think so?
We have learned about jousting tournaments, moats that were really very stinky, drawbridges and gatehouses where guards lived, and the castle keep. We talked about why the windows of the Great Hall were so large and why the first floor windows were so small. Did you know that food was decorated with fur and feathers to make it look alive? People didn't bathe or do their laundry very often either. They did use lots of good smelling herbs and spices though. Now we are in the process of building a castle ourselves. While we work and work and work, we talk about how hard it was to build a real castle because they didn't have the power tools and construction equipment we have today.
Well, castle construction has taken quite a long time. However, we have some actual photos for you to see. We have measured our castle and compared this to the size of an actual castle and to Emerald Hill! It's amazing! The castle was 240 feet x 240 feet and the center square of our school is 240 feet also! Our school's the size of a castle!
We are now learning about dragons. So far, we created our own dragons by selecting different animal parts and combining them into one creature. Then we found out that the Chinese dragon is made up of the parts of different animals too: the head of a camel, the horns of a deer, the scales of a carp, eyes of a hare, ears like a bull, belly like a frog, paws of a tiger and claws of an eagle. We heard a story about how the four rivers of China came to be formed. Did you know they were, according to legend, four dragons who were trapped by the Jade Emperor for helping the Chinese people? We also heard the story of The Dragon Prince. It is a Chinese Beauty and the Beast tale. In the story, the farmer's life is saved by his youngest, prettiest, and hardest working daughter, Seven. She agrees to marry the dragon and finds out he is really a prince. Her jealous sister, Three, plots against her. Three wants to take Seven's place. Will the prince "see" that he is being deceived? Ask your 1st grader.
Keep checking TAP notebooks to see our progress.
Take a Chance!
Any way you throw the dice or spin the spinner you're sure to enjoy this unit on probability. You will investigate both fair and unfair games using dice, spinners, and math manipulatives to learn how probability can affect the fairness of the games people play. The data you collect will help you learn to evaluate the probability of a favorable outcome.
