I want to come up with a theme for my room to center around what we learn in social studies in 4th grade, which is the states, regions, and our own state, Arizona.
I already know I will be putting up a map of the U.S. and I joined a postcard exchange, so those will be going up with the map once we receive them in October.
But I want to center the whole room around that.
What are some ideas you have or have used? I looked in the archives, but didn't find much. Also, my classroom only has two already made bulletin boards and those are used for Mountain Math and Language. I'll have to make my own on the walls. I would like to hang things from the ceiling as well. I do have a reading corner and even a place called the Board Room, where I read aloud and we have classroom meetings.
Any ideas or suggestions will be great appreciated!
Did you see the Disney Cars movie? It seems to be centered in Arizona. Do you live by Route 66 or I40?. I know I have seen roads and car decorating sets in the bulletin board sections. You can have your class create road maps to show where they spent there summer. A thought you can use could be: A journey, or a trip or even Let's go.
I'm sure there will be posters with the cars movie. What about having a class car that you attach to the map to display where you will be going next. I would love to see what other ideas come up with this theme. I may want to do this another year. Good luck! Jeanne
I haven't seen it yet...and I don't think we're near those highways. But, I could definitely do a Route 66 or change it to Route 10 (since that's the highway all my kids know about it). I want to do an AR board that I saw here using cars and such. So, I could use this idea for that definitely.
I love the idea of having a car show where we are going next. Love that! Thanks!
Any more ideas? I just need things to jumpstart my brain.
What about a bulletin board with "Learning Can Take You Anywhere". You can use this for geography. Perhaps your students can write about places they would like to journey to. Read books about those places and even illustrate them.
Or maybe, you could have a student be the "Explorer of the Week" and report about a real or fictional place to the class. You could also put up pictures of that student.
Teach your students about the compass and create some sort of "treasure hunt" or "exploring the school" theme for your first week using compass directions and footsteps where your students will have to find areas of the school that you want them to be familiar with. There are lots of great books for teaching mapping skills at various age levels.
What about an art project teaching your students how to make "old" paper by dying it in tea? They could create maps or a great journal cover or journal pages using this technique and write a much more interesting story about their summer vacations than by using plain old binder paper.
This past year, I created a job board that looked much like a city map. The students were represented by various types of transportation and drove around the "community" to their various jobs which I switched out each week.
You could create a bulletin board that looks like a suitcase (or use an old suitcase) and have the students create those old fashioned suitcase stickers that represent places they have traveled, are from or just want to go to. If you go with an actual suitcase, you could use it to hold props for book talks or history/geography lessons and it could be an interesting way to build student excitement.
I like these ideas. I was trying to think of how to turn my back to school bulletin board into a big world and say something like "around the world in second grade" since we study all the continents throughout the year.... but maybe I can switch it to this.
I used to teach Kindergarten in a charter school. One of the concepts we had to teach was the 7 continents. I can hear the moans about teaching continents to kindergarteners. I know I moaned too. I used a wonderful website and actually printed what I needed. 2 of the things I used that my students loved were The Continental Clap (like a rap) and The Continent Song sung to the song Love and Marriage. My students learned the 7 continents and lots of information about the world. I found this by doing a google search for the Baltimore Curriculum Project. I have these two things saved in Word if you are interested. Reading the last post reminded me of this resource and I thought I would share.
you also mentioned world studies. I teach 6th grade, and one thing we did this year was to go on a "cruise". I decorated my room with posters the kids made of the country they were assigned. Prior to this, I called a travel agency and they got together some posters that I picked up, laminated and hung on the outside of my door and also inside. I then made the desks look like a ship by putting banner around them. When they entered I gave them a drink complete with cocktail umbrella. They had a ball. Some of this you could keep up all year if you wanted to.
If you look for any teaching ideas, a great website is thesolutionsite.com. You don't have to use everything each lesson says. You can use parts. The above idea came from the unit "passport to port."
I am so excited! I just found this web address where you can download and print colored "Passport" stamps from different countries around the world. The directions are there and you will need your own label paper. Also, this site is affiliated with a religious/missionary group but the stamps do not have religious info on them (that I could tell) so I don't think that will be a problem. Hope you find this helpful!
Can't sleep, so I got online and saw your link. Those are FABULOUS!!! Do you think there would be any copyright issue if we aren't using it for mission purposes? I love them!
Tina, about your BtoS board and around the world. I made a huge blue circle and then cut out the continents and glued them on and hung it outside my door. The title was "Where in the world have you been?" then I put all the kids names in magnifying glasses with a subtitle "I've been looking for you everywhere." It posted their names so they could find their class but then we used the globe and main title all year. They drew pictures of where they visited during the summer, made graphs to show how many children had been to different states and countries and then posted some of our international study stuff too.
i'd love the lyrics to those two songs if you don't mind sharing!
I'm a first year 6th grade teacher going with a travel theme and think those would fit in great! thanks!
Dear NCTeach
I would be very interested in your two songs that you have saved in word! Can you please post it as an entry? I am thinking about doing a K unit about cultures /travel around the world and would like to also have them learn the names of the continents. Thank you!
06-17-2006, 08:32 AM
I know I moaned too. I used a wonderful website and actually printed what I needed. 2 of the things I used that my students loved were The Continental Clap (like a rap) and The Continent Song sung to the song Love and Marriage. My students learned the 7 continents and lots of information about the world. I found this by doing a google search for the Baltimore Curriculum Project. I have these two things saved in Word if you are interested. Reading the last post reminded me of this resource and I thought I would share. 
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