A journey to the grasslands

 This quarter my students have been studying all about the grasslands. Because there are grasslands all over the world, we focused on the ones in Africa. We started by watching the opening scene from "The Lion King", which is great because it shows all of the different animals that live in the African savanna/grasslands.

Here's one of the boards outside my room showing off all their work and what they learned:

How cute are these lions? I cut strips of paper in yellow, brown and orange and showed my kinders how to curl them around a pencil. Great for fine motor skills and it kept them busy for a LONG time!

And here's the information we learned about lions:

I wrote it out with the blanks, and the kids helped me fill it in.

They made these elephants in Art class, so I'm not sure exactly how they did it. I can tell that they used paper plates and it looks like they cut a circle in a spiral shape for the trunk. Super cute!

And our elephant writing:

We talked about giraffes and all the different body parts. I traced the giraffe on butcher paper and painted it yellow. Then when it was dry each child got to add a spot and then we labeled it. I love doing this activity!

Our final project was a writing assignment. Each student had to pick an animal and give clues to have people try and guess which animal they were. I was really surprised at the level of my student's work! 

Translation: I live in the grasslands. I eat leaves. I have a long neck.

a giraffe

We did a lot more with this unit, including looking at zebras and using map skills to locate the grasslands on a map of Africa. Very proud of my kiddos and their work. They have come a long way from the beginning of the year!