The Thirteen Colonies

 So I'm an auditory learner.  Sure, there are some things I learn better by seeing or doing, but give me a book on tape and I'm happy as a clam.  The little piece of sand that irritates my clam-ness, however, is when I have a student who is not an auditory learner, which happens with distressing frequency.  Their eyes glaze over.  They fall asleep.  Or, in the case of my very kinesthetic son, climb a nearby wall.  I've been puzzled over and over as to why my own two kiddos don't get into my history classes more.  Its my favorite subject and I find it distressing to get to the end of a history lesson and realize that their retention was less than stellar.

 So I'm on a mission to rework my classes.  I'm hoping it is a springboard for some very cool future professional development for me.  My goal is to find activities to make history come alive for my visual learner as well as my kinesthetic learner.  So here's our current project.  I went to a local natural fibers yarn shop and purchased wool felting tools and a large assortment of wool roving in delicious colors.  I love they way they look in my basket.  Then we used an overhead projector to trace a map of the original thirteen colonies in the United States onto a piece of wool blend felt, one yard in length.

Each colony is being depicted in its own color.  You can tell by the blur in the lower corner that Mr. Blueberry Eyes is loving the movement of this project.  I'm not sure how we'll label them yet.  Its a work in progress, but I was so excited that I wanted to post a sneak peek. - Nanette