It's been a while since I've posted so this is going to be a post filled with some activities that happened before our winter break and a few things that happened during our first two days back!
The week before winter break we did activities as a whole fifth grade group. One of the things we did was a fun STEM project where we launched "presents" (hershey kisses) into "Santa's present sack"
(a bucket) :). The students were paired up and given two yards of masking tape, yarn, pop sickle sticks, and a plastic cup and were tasked with creating a slingshot/catapult that would be able to launch a Hershey kiss down the hallway and hopefully make it into the bucket.
Here are some pictures of their preparation:
Here are some of the creations in action:
Now on to our first two days post-break. This week in history we spent some time reviewing the different taxes placed in the American colonists by the British government, specifically the Stamp Act. We talked about what sorts of problems the Stamp Act caused for the colonists.
The kiddos then paired up and wrote skits depicting some of the different real life struggles the Stamp Act caused. They wrote from the perspective of a small family whose daughter found out there would be a heavy tax on her marriage license in order for her to marry. They also wrote from the perspective of a sailor attempting to buy playing cards before heading out to sea. He realizes that the tax on his playing cards is just as much as the cards themselves and he feels cheated because he was not even given a say in whether or not he thought the taxes were fair (taxation without representation).
I hope everyone has a great snowy weekend and stays nice and warm! I know I am! I'll be cozied up reading a book most of this weekend :)
