Noah's Ark Lesson Plans

While we are waiting for our official textbooks to arrive for the year, I needed a theme to help me organize all the things I wanted to hit in the first weeks of school! Noah's Ark seemed the perfect fit since I've always wanted to incorporate some religion in with our studies and it was broad enough that I could do other fun things that I thought the kids would like. These ideas took us through about 7 days. For example we did:

Language Arts: 

• Read Story out loud and choose vocabulary words for the week. At first we used the direct context clues to try to figure out what they were. Later in the week, we would look them all up in the dictionary and write them in sentences.
• Watched a Noah movie and worked on a compare and contrast writing prompt. We worked on an outline, rough draft and final draft of a 2-paragraph essay throughout the week.
• Ultimately at the end of the week, we had a big discussion on whether or not the story was real. Did a flood that covered the whole world really happen? After talking about ideas for both sides, they had to write their own opinion on the question. (They both decided it was real!)

Math:

• We learned 2x2 multiplication. Get it, two by two! Stretching, but still... We learned a new method each day: traditional, lattice, box and ended the week with a "test".

Science:

• After learning about the scientific method (question, research, hypothesis, experiment, analyze, report), we started up our own rainbow celery experiment. Each stalk of celery sat in a glass of colored water (except our control stalks in no water and clear water). It has to sit for 24+ hours. When we came back to it, the color had traveled up the capillaries of the celery to deliver the water to the leaves. It was funny to think that they thought worms traveled up the stalks before! It was a lesson in plants and roots, but also translates to the human body and how blood is transferred. 
  
• We also watched some videos on storms, although they weren't as meat-y as I would have liked.
• Finally, they each picked an animal that could have been on the Ark and we went to the library to research it's habitat, anatomy and patterns. They brainstormed research questions and then had to answer them in a powerpoint. So, we hit some language arts and technology here. I sat with each of them to teach them powerpoint, how to write for presentations, choosing appropriate slides and adding photos. They are pretty proud and we'll be presenting those to Dad this week. This has been the longest carry-over project since we work on this a little each day and they have to take turn on the computer.

Art

• We talked about did some drawings early in the week of what the interior of the ark looked like. Did all the animals sleep in their own rooms? Was is open on the inside to all the animals? Where was the food? So, they each focused on a deck and drew what thought the Ark looked like from the top down. Brandon did a reptile and bird deck. Sophia did a mammal deck. It was pretty cute and they had fun figuring out where all the animals went.

Field Trip

• We went to the Skirball up in Los Angeles. They have a great Noah's Ark exhibit (see previous post). The best part to me was the discussion that they opened there about how each different culture has a flood story. Although each is different in some way, each culture survived a mass flood whether it be on the back of a turtle or in a large canoe. This was a big part of our "Did it really happen?" conversation.

So, that sums up our first week and our lessons on Noah's Ark. It was my first time trying to theme our lessons. I think they kids really liked it. Next up, Ocean Tides and Waves - with an accompanying field trip to the beach!