Monday, April 28, 2014

M is for...

Minnesota!  
There's more to our home state than lakes and snow.  Here are a few popular "M" attractions ~
1.  Mill City Museum - historical museum for one of the World's Largest Food Companies, General Mills, which is located in the Minneapolis area.

2.  Minnesota Zoo - one of the first zoos to organize its animals by their living environment as opposed to their species.  This zoo is nice but we like Como Zoo better (only a $2 donation/person, simple to get around, close-up view of animals, & carnival rides for the kids).  

3.  MOA - largest mall in the country for the most stores. It receives more visitors than any mall in the world.  

4.  Museum of Laura Ingalls Wilder - Little House on the Prairie was one of my favorite shows growing up!  Visitors to the museum can learn the history of the Ingalls family while they lived in Minnesota and see memorabilia from the TV series.  

During our Minnesota Unit, we read the first book in Laura Ingalls Wilder's book series ~
Little House in the Big Woods.  The girls loved it!
I like how the book is so descriptive with lots of vivid imagery.  We did a fireside activity after reading this portion from the chapter, "Winter Days & Winter Nights" ~
"She [Laura] loved to look at the fire in the fireplace, flickering and changing all the time, burning yellow and red and sometimes green above the logs, and hovering blue over the golden and ruby coals."
I drew flames on the fireside printable and the girls had fun creating marble paintings.

They also enjoyed the making the log cabin picture.

5.  M&Ms - Did you know that the maker of these popular candies was from Minnesota?
Forrest Mars, Sr. was born in Wadena, MN.

We culminated our unit with some M&M Math Fun!
M&M Sorting

M&M Fact Families

M&M Counting

M&M Graphing - Graph found here.
I made up the questions. They are available here.

M&M Patterns - Cards found here.

M&M Measuring
The printable was originally made for measuring with Hershey kisses. I changed ours to say, "M&Ms". Gotta love BIC Wite-Out Correction Tape! :-)

Map of the Ingalls' Family Journey found here.
Books Read - Welcome to the USA: Minnesota, Little House in the Big Woods, The M&Ms Counting Book, & More M&Ms Math


3 comments:

Stine said...

Your students are so happy! You are blessed and you are such a blessing to Christian, Carysse, Kalia & Caleb and to all who read your blog.

Caryn said...

Thanks, Mom! You're always my #1 Encourager! :-)

Stine said...

You're welcome! You deserve it.