FREE BrainPop App

I have a subscription to BrainPop because I love their short, educational, fun, videos on all content areas. It is an invaluable resource. They have many videos that you can watch with your kiddos without a subscription and they even have a FREE link just for educators with lots of free resources from lesson, standards, quizzes, etc. Simply click on the link to start.

One of my favorite new features is that you can add an Featured Movie app to your blog. It will play a different educational movie every week along with quizzes for the students. This gives student an excellent opportunity to review concepts at home, preview concepts, as well as have videos on important holidays/events.

And once again, the best part is that it is all for FREE.

Early Explorers

We have been sooo busy. For the last four weeks we have been learning about the early European explorers that set out across the ocean blue. We learned about new inventions, such as the printing press, mapmakers, navigational tools, vessels, crews, lands, peoples, and animals never before seen by European eyes. We learned about what they did and their explorations in search for cities of gold, riches, the fountain of youth, and conquering of new lands and peoples. Some major explorers such as Columbus, Cabata, Cortes, Polo, and Vespucci...just to name a few. The students found it very interesting, especially the part of planting the flag down in the ground and claiming that land for a faraway country. They were outraged at the enslavement and treatment of the natives. They were inspired by the braveness of the explorers.

To sum up their learning, they created a tri-fold presentation of one the explorers. They had to include a flag from the sponsoring country, a timeline, a journal entry, create a model of something of the time, and write a short biography with early life details, sponsoring country, what they "discovered", and any other interesting facts they deemed important. I was very pleased with the results--they learned and had fun--yippee!

 I have included a copy of the instructions that were sent home. I hope it helps. Just click on the picture below to get your copy.

What activities do you do for early explorers?