COUNTRIES

There are many different ways, as a teacher, that you can teach your class about different countries throughout the world and one way by making salt dough maps. In class we divided up into groups and picked a country that we wanted to do research on and my group chose Brazil. This was a three day projects and the first day we did research on our country so we could present the information to our class. The information included climate, popular animals, plants, festivals, and how many people live there. On the second day we made a salt dough map of the country and put food coloring in it to represent mountains and flat land as well as the ocean to the east of the country. We had extra dough left over so we also made the flag and a mask that the people wear during the carnival that happens every year in Brazil. One the third day we presented our maps and information to the class. Students could use this project to study about a country but they could also study about a state and make a salt dough map of a state of their choice. They would do research on the state, or country, and present their findings to the class, or they could write a paper about what they found.

COMMUNITIES

In class we did a project in which everyone brought in a picture of what they see when they look out of their front door. In my picture there is a field that I see when I look out my front door but this was not the case for other people in the class. In some pictures there were parking lots, houses, sidewalks, etc. Each student took their picture and compared it to another one that was brought in. In each picture there were similarities but also differences when comparing them to your own picture. After comparing the images, each person put their picture up on the wall and we all looked at them and discussed what we saw and what we could gather from each picture. This can be used in an elementary class when learning about communities and explaining that there are some similarities and differences in each type of community. We can all relate something in each picture even if we do not live around it ourselves.