Life On The Mayflower

We have been busy learning all about the Mayflower Voyage lately in our unit about the Past and the Present! The students are all SO ENGAGED AND EXCITED!

We started off this unit by starting with the Mayflower and Pilgrims.  We began by picking up and [[skim]] reading one of our favorite book series! Note: I find it best to skim much of this book depending on the age of the students.

As we read a section of the book, we would jot down facts onto our "Life on The Mayflower" anchor chart

After we had researched about the Mayflower, what life was like on the Mayflower, and why the pilgrims went on the Mayflower I told the students that it was time for them to pack their chests because they were about to go on the Mayflower {inspired by Cara Carroll's Mayflower suitcases}! They were SO EXCITED!! We reviewed what things the Pilgrims were allowed to take with them on the Mayflower and then they were each handed their own chest to pack with things that they would have had in the Pilgrim era. I uploaded tracers for these Mayflower chests here.

Once they all had packed their chests, they were told to meet at the carpet.  (we happened to do this entire lesson in one day, however it can easily be split up by doing this next part at a later time) We talked about how we were going to pretend that the carpet was the Mayflower.  As we sat aboard the Mayflower, we watched the first ten minutes of "Charlie Brown Mayflower Voyage" - while I do not often watch videos to teach, there were so many benefits of using this one!! Before we watched, we talked about how there were no TVs/videos/Charlie Brown at the time of the pilgrims and that this was a tool that we have today that enables us to learn about long ago.
1)  it is pretty historically correct
2) Charlie Brown is pretending he was on the Mayflower Voyage - just as the students were
3) The sounds within the media often changed based on the emotions happening - so a couple times when that happened while watching, we stopped & talked about what the point of the sounds were doing - which covers teaching ELA TEK #16B!

Coming next: Life of a Pilgrim