Where in Vermont is.....?

After working with our Vermont maps, each student chose a town they had a connection with; maybe where a relative lives, maybe where they ski or perhaps a favorite place to hang out with family and friends. Each child then had the opportunity to wood burn the town name along with latitude and longitude coordinates into a piece of wood. We will work on displaying these over the next several weeks. In ECO on November 17th, we will be looking at the topography of Hubbard Park and we will take what we have learned and create our own topographical maps of Vermont. Why do you think people move where they move? Is it because of the towns? Or what the area has to over in the great outdoors? We will be trying to answer this questions as we look at the overall topography of the state.

Wood Burning Geography

Last week we spent time looking at Vermont maps to learn about latitude and longitude. We learned that latitude lines lie flat from east to west and longitude lines run from north to south. These measurements help us find an absolute location. We each chose a town in Vermont to locate and have been wood burning the latitude and longitude measurements into our arrows. Stay tuned for a final picture.

*NEW* Student Learning Links ~ Using Blog Labels

As we learn more and work on our blog, we'll be using different "Labels" attached to our blog posts. When we add labels to our blog posts, you'll be able to view all of the posts grouped together under each subject.

In the right-hand column of the blog, you can see "Student Learning Links" with this list:
   ECO
   Recommended Reading
   Student Art
   Vermont Studies

Click on the subject you want to view, and... voila!  You can see everything we've posted on that subject.  For example, click on 'Vermont Studies,' and you'll be able to see all our Vermont Studies posts.

We may decide to add more labels throughout the year, so keep checking back for more.

GIANT Vermont Map

Last week 4th graders had the opportunity to walk all over Vermont...literally.

The Vermont Geographic Alliance has designed this 18' X 24' map to include towns, villages, counties, highways, rivers, lakes, and shaded relief. It comes with a variety of hands-on and feet-on activities to explore the geography of Vermont. The map is not only a map of Vermont, but was also wholly designed and produced in Vermont.  We spent time measuring distances with a map scale, exploring counties and creating tables to organize our data. In the coming weeks we will use our Vermont maps from this summer to investigate population patterns, state capitals through history as well as latitude and longitude.