I'm not going to lie, when I was hired to teach First Grade, a Texas unit was the first thing that popped in my head! In First Grade, students are taught the symbols of our great state! One of my most vivid memories from First Grade was learning about Texas! My precious first grade teacher did such a great job of making the different places in Texas come to life with her stories. My favorite was her story about going down the Rio Grande River in a kayak and flipping over in the water. We made this little book all about Texas and I still have it 20 years later. Our Texas unit also overlapped with Open House, so I wanted to make sure we had lots of fun learning to share with our families!
We kicked off our Texas unit with a class book! I love a good class book! Each student illustrated a page or two for our Texas Alphabet Book.
We kicked off our Texas unit with a class book! I love a good class book! Each student illustrated a page or two for our Texas Alphabet Book.
Here are two of my students reading the book to their parents at Open House.
Use this to make your own alphabet book!
Our next Texas project was a Texas Scrapbook! I created this interactive Mix and Match Texas Scrapbook to teach my students about our great state. It includes tons of different Texas symbols, people, places and facts for students to complete.
I really wanted this scrapbook to be interactive and allow students to research. On this page students used Google Earth to label different cities on the state.
For the cover I took a picture of each child in their cowboy gear! We colored a cowboy hat and just attached it to a sentence strip!
We also wrote cowboy and cowgirl stories! My students pretended that they were a cowboy or cowgirl and wrote a story from that perspective.
And of course we had to add a craft to go with our writing!
They turned out so cute and they were a hit at Open House! The craft and other writing prompts are available HERE.
Students also decorated a boot at home and brought it back for our bulletin board!
I really wanted this scrapbook to be interactive and allow students to research. On this page students used Google Earth to label different cities on the state.
For the cover I took a picture of each child in their cowboy gear! We colored a cowboy hat and just attached it to a sentence strip!
I used manila folders to bind the scrapbooks together and let students decorate with star stickers. I also added raffia ribbon on the sides for a cute touch. They loved reading these scrapbooks to their parents at Open House.
We also wrote cowboy and cowgirl stories! My students pretended that they were a cowboy or cowgirl and wrote a story from that perspective.
And of course we had to add a craft to go with our writing!
They turned out so cute and they were a hit at Open House! The craft and other writing prompts are available HERE.
Students also decorated a boot at home and brought it back for our bulletin board!
We also made this little WANTED posters to hang in the hallway. They drew themselves as an outlaw. #precious
I think my favorite Texas project was our Texas Weather video! I love when I can integrate various subjects and technology! We were learning about weather, so I thought it would be fun to give weather reports for different cities in Texas. We used a green screen to record our weather reports and then used iMovie to add picture backgrounds to match each city.
Students used the Weather Bug app to look up information for their city and write a script. The fun microphone prop came from the party store! This green screen was created using a large piece of green fabric.
We LOVED watching our finished project and sharing it with parents! They were so impressed with our use of technology and all of our Texas knowledge! : )