We read The Gingerbread Man , and the students had fun with the rhyming and repetition in the story. They would recite it along with me. Ask your students what the tricky fox did. We made some glittery decorations to display, too:
In the curriculum we read Me on the Map, a story about a little girl who draws maps of her room, street, city, state, country, and the world. I have a tool that takes the kids on an imaginary hot air balloon ride with a little girl. It starts out with a view of a park as though you are standing in front of it. Objects are hidden by a fence. As the balloon takes off, the second view reveals the objects you could not see before. The final picture shows a birds-eye view of the park. You see only the flat surfaces of three-dimensional objects. I love this tool.
We also read Tar Beach which is a lovely tale of a girl imagining herself flying over her city. It helps get the children thinking about the view from above. It is also a story about the human spirit and strength in dealing with hardships.
To complete this week of mapping, we created a balloon out of construction paper and added a shared writing activity. The writing emphasized the fact that objects appear flat from above, and that is how they appear on maps. I plan to revisit mapping and cover more details later in the year when we cover three-dimensional objects in math. These balloons will go up in our room soon:
Stories open up your child's world to so many ideas and concepts. I hope you will spend some time reading with your student this holiday season. It's a gift that will last a lifetime.
