This week in Alpha…
Wicked? No WAY!
This week in Our Big Backyard…
Alphas have a good understanding of the prairies and high plains’ resources, flora, and fauna but we haven’t talked much about the first humans who lived in Texas – particularly in that eco region! Alphas learned that when Europeans discovered Texas about 500 years ago, but didn’t explore the land for about 100 more years. They learned that they were NOT the first people to inhabit this state! Scientists have determined that human beings evolved in Africa around 2 million years ago and began moving into Asia.
“…each inch represents one hundred years…the chopstick represents us, right now on the rug, the next chopstick represents 1925 when the very first television was invented, the blue screwdriver represents 1825 which was a time when people moved to the USA in huge numbers, the pink screwdriver represents 1725 – the United States of America didn’t exist! But pockets of people from Europe started colonizing North America, the black screwdriver represents 1625 – when explorers were exploring different parts of North America with the help of the people they found living there! The pencil represents Spanish explorers who discovered TEXAS and claimed it for SPAIN -even though they met people who had been living in Texas for 9 more rulers (12-13,000 years)!
We looked at a map of the world and wondered how the heck early humans made it across the ocean to North America – where humans have lived for around 20,000 years. Then, we compared it with a map of the world during the ice age – which was going on at the time the early humans were exploring Africa and Asia…
Because there was so much water locked up on land, the oceans were much more shallow – exposing LOTS more land: Asia and North America were connected! Once the Earth warmed up, the ice melted, the seas rose and that connection was deep underwater!
Why did people travel? No one knows for sure – but the scientists believe that the earliest humans were hunter-gatherers. Alphas thought that if so much of the Earth was covered in snow and ice there wasn’t a whole lot of gathering going on – things don’t grow so well when it’s always winter! Alphas figured that early humans needed to hunt in order to eat. Scientists believe that animals were traveling in order to find food (and heat) and humans followed them. It would be as if our HEB’s wandered far and wide – we’d have to follow them if we wanted our groceries! These ancient humans, archeologists call Paleoindians – and the food they followed were MEGAFAUNA! Huge beasts like wooly mammoths, short-faced bears, American lions, glyptodonts, and smilodons roamed North America and Paleoindians followed them. They all disappeared around 11,000 years ago and scientists believe it was due in large part to falling into the black-hole of our ancestors’ mouths!
WE LOVE MEGAFAUNA!
WE LOVE HUNTING PRACTICE!!!
WE LOVE THIS NEW TECHNOLOGY CALLED THE ATLATL!!!!
Alphas learned that there is very little left of the Paleoindians except for a few well preserved artifacts and LOTS of stone tools called lithics. Archeologists have found lots of dart points that were attached to spears. These were used to hunt all kinds of creatures that they didn’t want to get too close to. Creatures like the mighty MAMMOTH! Alphas had a GREAT time measuring and building parts of a LIFE-SIZED MAMMOTH!!!
“Two 13 foot tusks comin’ right up!”
How about some MAMMOTH LEGS?!
Measuring….
Shaping and taping…
…and stuffing!!!!
Alphas had a great time making “slip,” and “wedging” clay to get rid of any air-bubbles before building models of their Paleoindian Hunters! We’ll add atlatls later 🙂
Wedging is THE BEST!!!!!
Fox models like a BOSS!
In Math…
Ms. Kim’s Mathletes learned that everything we see and touch has shape; some shapes are flat (2 dimensional) and some have depth (3 dimensional). We explored our school for shapes as we went on a Shape Safari!
Making straight lines, curved lines, shapes with straight sides, and shapes with curved sides…
Finding the polygons…
We practiced adding with fact families for 5…
We talked about how it feels when we don’t do things as well or as quickly as others and we practiced “mirroring” and giving and taking control of a situation…
Ms. Eliza’s Math Wizards started out the week investigating nickels and how they’re different or similar to pennies “ They’re both coins!” “They have presidents on them.” “They’re different colors.” We played games and activities that had us counting by 5’s (just like nickels do). On Tuesday we played Ten Hoppers to practice adding and subtracting tens within the 100 chart and . On Wednesday, we learned about graphs and how they help us organize information. We tallied, counted and analyzed data on monster dice throws. Thursday we created a fact family neighborhood!
In ELA…
Ms. Kim’s Mad Poet Society… In addition to working on alphabetizing our sight words, we practiced new ending blends, read, wrote with a visual prompt, and wrote riddle-poems – and shared them!
Nice Alphabetical Order!
Gabe’s poem “Me and Anna” Isla reads her “Guess my Feeling” poem…FURIOUS!
Ms. Eliza’s group started our week with short i. We’re listening to the sound words start and end with and practice how to write them. Our sight words this week are he/she. We read a fun poem book called Cat’s Colors and wrote our own color poem…
We read it to Ms. Kim’s Group to see if they could guess what the poem was about.
“It’s a rainbow poem!” They got it!
Our fairy Tale comparison this week was Little Red Riding Hood and then we heard The Wolf’s Side of the Story…we voted after hearing what the wolf had to say…
NONE of us believed him!
We also read a beautiful book called Zen Shorts by Jon J Muth. We learned how to paint Pandas ink and brush style the way the main character Stillwater painted his pictures. We’ll be adding more to them next week.
& In Other News…
In STEAM this week we wondered…Can you make a mini atlatl out of popsicle sticks, tape and a paperclip?
We discovered…why, yes! Yes we can!
