Routes to California

We just started our unit in social studies on the Gold Rush. It is by far my favorite unit in social studies!  We do lots of hands on activities to enhance our knowledge. Here is one of the them!
We start by reading the corresponding lessons in our text book to build our back ground knowledge.  These two lessons include topics about who and where gold was discovered, the routes taken to California, life in mining camps, and tools that miners used.  After we are done with our reading, we take a trip to the computer lab where we read more about the routes people took to get to California on PBSkids.org  

You can check it out here

Journey of the Forty-niners

Students completed the following worksheet with basic information about the routes and then have to evaluate whether or not they would want to take that route and why.  

We take these worksheets and put them in our "California Binder" which is a collection of work from social studies this year.

The site has other information about the gold rush that students can read if they finish early! My students always love an excuse to go to the computer lab and this activity keep them quiet but engaged for a solid half hour!

Finding Adjectives Using Fried Rice

This week we read the story "The Last Dragon" by Susan Nunes.

 I thought that since my class doesn't get a lot of exposure to other cultures this would be a great opportunity to expose them to a food they may have never tried... fried rice!

Here is the recipe I used. You will also need an electric skillet, a rice cooker, measuring cups, and measuring spoons.

Fried Rice

Instant white rice

Soy sauce

Sausage

1 can of mixed vegetables

2 eggs

I had students help me carry out this recipe. We talked before hand about kitchen safety,

 Step one:  Cook rice according to directions on the box. My helpers measured out the rice and water, added it to our rice cooker, and of course flipped the "cook" switch!

 Step Two: Cut sausage into small pieces. I had my helpers cut the sausage in half length wise and then cut it into smaller pieces.  I made sure to review knife safety with each student before they started!
Side note- When I make this dish at home I use a traditional Asian sausage but since I was trying to appeal to the taste of a fourth grader, I went for a simple Jimmy Dean link sausage.

Step Three: At this point I would normally scramble and cook the eggs but since I have a student with an egg allergy I left this step out.

Step four: Cook sausage

Step Five: Drain vegetables. Add cooked rice to skillet. Add veggies. Add soy sauce to taste. I had students then take turns mixing the rice and veggies.

Our finished product!

Before we were allowed to eat our rice we did a quick activity with adjectives (never miss out on that educational moment!) I am constantly working with my students on including detail in their writing. So we took a moment to brain storm how the rice looked, smelled, and tasted.  I listed these words in a bubble map.

We then talked about  how I could simply say "I helped make the rice. It was good" or I could say " I smelled the delicious rice as I helped make it. It looked lumpy but colorful. As I tasted the first bite, it was amazing and wonderful!"

The Last Dragon

This week we read a story called "The Last Dragon". In addition to reading the story we spent some time studying about dragons. We looked at the role they play in the Chinese culture as well as various other cultures. I put at this information into a PowerPoint, which the students loved! I found a mosaic dragon picture online and thought it would be cute for my students to do. So...we created our own mosaic dragon. The students loved this activity and I will definitely do it again next year!

We started by printing out various pictures of dragons for inspiration.

The students then sketched their own dragons

Then they glued construction paper "tiles" to the sketch to give their dragons scales. I had pre cut a bunch of squares but the students cut them to size as needed.

The last step in this project was each student wrote a short story about their dragon based on the information they had learned this week. They had to include things such where the dragon lives, the color of the dragon, and characteristics of that dragon.