Mining Songs by Caroline

There have been many things going on during social studies. We have lately been doing a lot of fun projects. I am going to tell you about one of them. It's called mining songs.

So first, we picked a tune to go along with our song. For example, my group picked Fancy. Next, Mrs. Mills (our teacher) gave us a text all about the miners and their lives and our group read the text together. After that, the groups made up a song that had words that matched what the text said so the song told about the miners and their life. Finally, we rehearsed our songs until they felt comfortable. The last step was to add a little actions to the song and show them to the class.

 

Sing the Song from Home on the Range by Quinn

While we visited the Midwest region in social studies, we learned about cowboys. We did the song to show how it was back in the cowboy days. We did it to the tune of Home on the Range. The cowboys back in the day herded cows. In the song we included what the cowboys see, hear, smell, and feel. It was a lot of fun!(To me)!

The videos below were taken by Quinn during some of the class performances of their songs about being a cowboy to the tune of "Home on the Range."

 

Jamestown Survival by Harris

So to play the game Jamestown Survival, you need a dice and some game chips. So there is a board with a lot of captions that say either good stuff or bad stuff. If you roll a 4, you move up 4. If the square says you either got sick, died, or you are fine. If you are sick, you are fine. If you die, you have to go back, and if you go around the whole board you WIN.

Hershey Mass Production

We're currently studying the Northeast region in social studies. One of our essential questions is, "Why did our nation's first factories start here?" We learned that the water and people in the Northeast region influenced factories being built here. Many factories were built near rivers and used the water to power their factories. In addition, the Northeast's population provided people power for the factories.

We "stopped" at the Hershey Factory to learn about mass production. Students worked in groups of three and specialized in one job: wrap cutter, candy placer, or candy wrapper. For three minutes, students worked in an assembly line to (re)wrap Hershey Kisses. Groups wrapped between 8 and 15 pieces of candy during this time.

After the activity, we thought a little about what it would be like to work in a factory, specializing in one job, for a 40 hour work week. Many students recognized it may not be as exciting to do the same job for eight hours a day as it was to do it for three minutes in class.

The video below includes some photos and video of our mass production.

Hershey Mass Production from kate mills on Vimeo.