Continents

With the Olympics beginning soon, I thought it would be only fitting to at least figure out where Sochi is and teach a mini lesson on continents. This is a very interesting topic for first graders. They love social studies and learning about things that are NEW to them. They have a hard time telling the different between a continent, country, state, and city. After explaining it to them I can understand why it is so confusing -- every country does it a little different. The most popular answer when asked "What continent do we live in?" was "MINNESOTA!" :-) We read about the continents, watched some live clips, which they couldn't believe especially when we looked at Anarctica and it was ALL snow and ice or when we looked at Australia and it was all black. They couldn't believe it was night time! I highly reccommend live cams (or live Skype sessions with people from each continent) to teach your kiddos about different places in the world. They were so excited. After all these exciting discoveries we made our own worlds on blue plastic plates. They turned out awesome and are proudly displayed in our classroom!