Our Great State!

We've spent the last month learning about the state of North Carolina. We started by learning about the important resources that contribute to North Carolina's economy in the 3 different regions. We made maps with 3D objects on them to represent various resources. 

Then we spent some time exploring the history of NC by making a giant timeline. Each of the students researched a couple of the most influential events and created a picture and caption of those events. Then we ordered them and shared them with each other. 

One of the significant events that affected North Carolina and the world was the Wright brothers and their first successful flight of a motorized airplane. We made model airplanes to represent the 1903 Flyer design of the Wright brothers. 

The finished Product!

Civil War Soldier

We got a special visit this week from a "Civil War soldier". A local college offers some amazing resources that allow kids to experience history in interactive ways, and this was one of those opportunities. He came in all his gear and explained to use what each of the items was. 

A sample of soldier rations

A newspaper

Confederate money

Coffee beans!

He even let one of the students try on a union uniform.

He read us a letter written by a soldier to his wife. 

The kids tried their hands at writing their own civil war letters.

A Step Back in Time

Here are a few pictures from our recent trip to visit a historical house near by. We started out exploring various artifacts and trying to solve the mystery of what each of them was. It's amazing to see how advanced certain technology was for the time. We discovered a shoe remover, a rotisserie, an apple slicer, a fabric crimper (called a fluter), and a hog scraper.

Believe it or not, this was an old-fashioned version of a Neti Pot. It's very pretty, but a little disgusting when you think about it. 

Our guide gave us very interesting information about the way life would have been in various decades that the house was in use. She showed us some of the tools that would have been used in the kitchen. 

This is a vacuum cleaner.

We learned all about this Civil War era gun. 

Then we took a tour through each of these decade rooms so we could see how things changed as the years passed. 

We been studying timeline in class, and this was a helpful visual for the history of the house.