Biography Kick off day

One of the Things we do is Drawing into the Heart of Reading by Heart of Dakota This program teaching the different Genres of reading, it also teaching biblical character traits and how to "direct" reading, thinking about "moods" "cause and effect" etc. The program starts for 2nd graders but the teacher is very hands on, starting 4th grade it is much more independent. I so adapt it, and we work together as much as we can on it. This program forces my kids to "slow down, and think" about their reading, it is a very different approach then what we normally do, and I like that. We only do this twice a week. We work on a new Genre, every couple months. At the start of the new genre we have a "kick off day" doing fun things to introduce that Genre. This time we did Biography. We talked about what a biography was, a true story of a personals life, written by another person 

Our first Activity was to look at some "family biographies" scrapbooks, of them, and other family History scrapbooks.

Then they each got to pick out the book they were reading. Ethan a book on Milton Hershey, Aaron picked Shark Lady, and Ryan a book on Benjamin Franklin (he does not really do the program) this was just for this day, and we were already learning about Ben Franklin in history. Another activity we did was they went through the house and found 5 things that they would want someone to write about them, and took turns telling there favorite things. As they did this I wrote these things on little strips of paper. After words I picked one of out a bowl and they had to guess who that thing match too. We had a lot of fun.

When we are done with the books they each do an activity from something they enjoyed about the book, Ethan of course wanted to make some Hershey chocolates, and Aaron and I made shark pancakes.  (no pictures of the pancakes but the turned out awesome!) Ethan also wrote a summery of what he learned from it, and Aaron drew a picture of his favorite seen from the book.

we made homemade peanut butter cups and almond Hershey chocolate bars. YUMMO!

wonderful job boys on your projects!

we did this Genre August through september