Thursday, May 5, 2011

Star Wars Unit Study ~ Day 1

We started our school day out with a lunch fit for any Star Wars fan!

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Top row: moon of Endor pesto pizza, blue Bantha milk, "That's not a moon!" pizza

Bottom row: carrots (yeah. They're just carrots), white chocolate snowflake from the planet Hoth, "Banana The Hut"

Then we moved on to school work.  This is set up as a workbox system unit study.  6 to 10 boxes per day are dedicated to our Star Wars study.  The other boxes have their regular school stuff in them.  These are the Star Wars bits.  :)

Day 1 for Cyan (grades 2 – 5)

1. Star Wars easy wordsearch (Feel free to copy and print the picture for the wordsearch.  I still have not been able to figure out how to attach a PDF file.)

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2. Story Starter *Moving to Hoth* – This was split between three boxes.

Your mom and you are moving to the planet of Hoth. You don’t want to go but are trying to make the best of it. Your mom says you can bring one pet. What would it be? What supplies would you need to move it to Hoth? What would happen if I changed Hoth to Endor? How would it be different?

  • a. Hoth = Antarctica
  • b. Endor = Northern CA Forest
  • * I printed out three sheets of lined paper appropriate for her writing level from Donna Young and printed the ‘Moving to Hoth’ story starter and stapled them all together. 
  • * Today we were focusing on Hoth.  (Endor will be tomorrow)  I had Cyan watch the Brain Pop on the Arctic, the Antarctic, and the Tundra.  This is what the planet of Hoth was based off of.  The movie was shot in New Zealand and so I focused on the Antarctic animals with my examples but she could pick any cold weather critter she wanted. Then I had her pick an animal that was suitable for living in those conditions out of the Animal Encyclopedia.  She chose an Ermine. 
  • * After she had picked her animal I had her write out the story.  She could illustrate if she wanted (she wanted).

3. We got the copy of the original Star Wars radio show for them to listen to while doing our craft for today.  Cyan’s craft was to cut out a Leia paper doll and her outfit from Hoth. 

 

Day 1 for Alex (grades 6 – 9)

1. I printed out a premade word search for this one.  It can be found here.

2. Story Starters *Robotic Hand* – This portion was two workboxes.

You wake up and you realize you have a robotic hand. How does it feel to have a robotic hand? As you lay in your hospital bed being looked over by your medical droids, things start to come back to you slowly. Who are you and how did you lose your human hand?

Of course, with Alex being so much older, I required much more of him for the writing assignment portion of the lesson.  I gave him the more abstract Story Starter and I also gave him quite a bit more leeway to put in what he wanted.  I made it due at the end of the week (Monday for us) and just required that he write it in cursive (something he has been working on).  I did have him watch the Brain Pop on robotics and robots to get his mind working in the right direction. 

3. Snap Circuits – I had him do the first project in a borrowed copy of the snap circuits game. 

4. I gave him instructions on how to fold an Origami X Wing fighter to do while we were listening to the Star Wars Radio Show.

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More fun tomorrow!!!

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