This year, the way it worked out, I only had one week for my community helpers unit. On top of that, it was Labor Day week, so it was only four days. I chose to take two days to talk about communities first, before delving into community helpers. It was actually a bit easier, I thought, to just teach about many community helpers over few days than teaching one each day.
We started out the week by reading Me on the Map. We spent time that day looking at Google Earth, starting at the world and zooming in farther and farther until we could see specific sites in St. Louis. We did a circle craft (I didn't take pictures!) in which they colored the world, the country, the state, the city, and their house. The country and state, I printed out the outline maps and just had them color them in.
The next day, we talked about places in our community. We read Places in my Neighborhood and made a big list of all kinds of places that we think are important to have in a community - fire station, police station, school, church, stores, pool, hospital, things like that. Then, we read Map My Neighborhood in preparation to make our own community maps!
This community map project was one my mom used to do with her class all the time. I paired kids up in our first real "group project." I was a little hesitant to do that so early in the year, but I thought that having them paired up might spark more meaningful decisions about what they need in their community and where they should put it. Unfortunately, I didn't see too much of that throughout the project, but they at least all worked with their partners without arguing or fighting, so that's a success, right?
All I did was to take 2 pieces of 12"x18" paper for each group and tape them together. I also cut some long black strips for roads. Besides that, I just set out markers and our scrap paper basket and let them go at it once I explained it!
We spent two days of art time working on these, and you can even see that each group got farther along than the other. One group finished with enough time to get everything labeled and give their town a name. Another group got most things labeled. My third group never even got to labeling, But hey, that's life, and they still all look pretty cool, I thought. with lots of learning going into them!
One last thing about my community helpers unit is the poem I use. We do a weekly poem related to our science/social studies theme. Most weeks, we will make art to go with it and put into their Poetry Book. We sing or say the poem each morning as part of our phonics routine.
This unit's poem goes like this:
When I grow up, I want to be
the very best _____________ that I can be.
I'll do my job so carefully
to be the best me that I can be!
In the blank, we put the name of a community helper or job. For this poem, I have a pocket chart version that we use during phonics, and that students can go use during center time as well. It's a fun way for them to learn print concepts and interact with the poem. I just wrote the poem out on sentence strips, cut up the words, and then wrote a number of community helpers on sentence strips, with accompanying pictures to help the students. They love doing that during center time!
For our art to go with this poem, the kids draw a self portrait of themselves as a grown-up in the job that they want. It takes a lot of time and patience, but I always put out lots of books so the students can look at what they might wear in that job, what kind of setting they would be in, and what kind of tools they might use. Both years, the result has actually been really good! Unfortunately, I don't have pictures to share of that artwork.
God's blessings and happy teaching!
Mikaela
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