Christmas in Europe: France

Many of you who follow my blog know our social studies standards have changed 

BIG TIME!

We have worked hard to try to get these standards to the students in many different ways this year.

We have changed so much of the way we teach including how we do our behavior system.

The students earn money each day and at the end of the 9 weeks we have a Market Day for them to spend their money they have earned.

This 9 weeks we crossed the ocean for Market Day and explored the continent of Europe.

The majority of the students' money was spent on buying their passports.

They had to fill out an application for the passport and send it off.

My class was worried because as of Wednesday morning our passports had not arrived and our flight was due to leave on Thursday morning.

They came in though with time to spare!

Mrs. Kim, our principal, bringing the special delivery package to us.

They were so excited the passports had arrived!

In the standards, the students are suppose to be able to locate and identify 6 countries in Europe.

They are also to know the history, geography, culture and government of these countries as well.

We have worked on most of these elements except the culture, so we thought Christmas would be a good time to get that in - as well as be a fun way to learn.  There are 6 third grade classes, so each of us drew a country.  

My class got France.

Now, it was up to us to learn as much as we could about the culture of France and then be able to teach our friends when they came to visit on Market Day.

You can see here some of the ways we prepared for our visitors.

The kids worked hard on getting the room ready as well as preparing themselves to be the tour guides on Market Day.

Here are some shots of the day in France as they taught their friends about France.

When the visitors came in, passports were checked and stamped to show they had visited France.

Then, they colored a French flag and glued it to their suitcase.

They also colored France on the map that was on their suitcase.

My students that were in charge of the art of France wanted us to have our own Louvre.

This was the perfect spot for it.

Each child made their own Mona Lisa.  Our visitors were able to use a QR code to show the real Mona Lisa exhibit at the Louvre.

We also studied Claude Monet who was from France.  We recreated his Water Lillies painting and, again, a QR code was used for the students to see the real painting.

For our food station, the students were able to purchase

Ratatouille - which they LOVED

baguettes

Muenster cheese

Brie cheese

Sparkling Grape Juice

The students that were in charge of the language did a cute job.

They found a website and created a QR code that would speak to the students in French.

They also had little French men with speech bubbles coming out of their mouths.

The top speech bubble would have a word in English and when you lifted it up, it would show you how to say the word in French.

The Eiffel Tower was the central focus of the room.

The kids loved this part of the room.

They would gather to have their picture taken, but the especially loved the QR code that allowed them to have a live camera feed on the Eiffel Tower.

It was super cool!

               

               

We were so blessed to have many parents and grandparents join us as well as members from our county's central office.

              It was a trip to remember!

Check out our #ECESEuropeanTour on Instagram and Twitter to see more.