What's Happening in Room 35

Pine City Trading Post

Tuesday we head to the Pine City Trading Post (Minnesota History Center) to learn more about Native Americans and Voyageurs.  We are reading a book in class called The Birchbark House by Louise Erdich.  The main character's name is Omakayas.  Her father is a voyageur.  I think the kids are really going to enjoy this.  I hope we have good weather.

Pioneer Unit

We are right in the midst of our Pioneer unit.  We are learning about westward expansion and the lives of the American Pioneers.  The kids are in "wagon train" groups and they earn points to travel the trail from Missouri to Oregon by completing various learning activities.  They have all updated their learning blogs with their latest "Pioneer Diary" entries.

Make sure to read the student blogs listed on the right side of this blog.  They are wonderful!

Minnesota History Center

Last week our class took a field trip to the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul. It was a wonderful day. My favorite exhibits were the new Minnesota 150, having to do with 150 of the most important things about Minnesota and the Open House: If these walls could talk. This exhibit displays an old house and the displays depict the families that lived in the house though the years. The most memorable exhibit is the tornado re-enactment. At the end of the day we had a presentation called "When I was a Kid". We learned all kinds of information about the lives of kids 100 years ago. We also took lots of photographs of artifacts. We were so interested in this presentation, we decided to write our own book. So we are in the process of finding good pictures and information about the lives of kids in Carlton County 100 years ago.

World Map and King Tut

We have been using a really cool world map from National Geographic to talk about the Ojibwe migration over 100's of years, as well as finding and discussing other locations, such as the polar ice caps.  Click here to view this interactive world map.  The site is called Map Machine.  We have also been talking about how global warming is affecting the polar bears and walruses in our polar regions due to the loss of polar ice.  We are all trying to do our small part by conserving fuel and electricity (which in turn saves fuel) which will lower greenhouse gas emissions.  Here is a site where you can learn more about global warming. 

We read in article in Scholastic News about King Tut.  The kids were interested in learning more, so Savanna suggested we go to the Scholastic News website to see if there was any additional information.  Sure enough we found this video podcast.  Thanks Savanna! Three teams of forensic artists and scientists—from France, the United States and Egypt—each built a model of the boy pharaoh's face based on some 1,700 high-resolution photos from CT scans of his mummy to reveal what he looked like the day he died nearly 3,300 years ago.

Hey kids!  If you visit our blog, make sure you leave a comment!  We have been enjoying looking at our cluster map (left sidebar) to see how many other people are looking at our learning blog.  We can't wait to see a red dot appear in Africa, Europe, or Australia.