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Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Lessons with Anansi at Story Cove

Today I substituted in one of my daughter's classes. The class is using Story of the World and this week's chapter was about Ancient Africa and included 2 stories about Anansi the Spider.

As I was preparing for this class, I found a site called Story Cove. You need to register, but this site is FREE! They have online cartoon videos of various stories, including a handful of Anansi stories. The stories are sorted by continent, with most of the stories come from Africa and Asia.

The site includes an area for kids to print off coloring pages, mazes, etc. And, it has free LESSON PLANS! Though the plans are mostly for kids in grades PreK-3rd, I found they worked well for my class of 4th & 5th graders. And, the kids REALLY enjoyed the videos! (We ended up watching 4.)

After doing some mapwork of Africa, we watched the video of Anansi & the Pot of Beans. Using the Lesson Plan, we covered:
  • similes
  • friendly letters
  • cause & effect
  • acrostic poems
Here's another sample of lessons from Anansi & Turtle Go To Dinner:
  • cooking
  • verbs
  • fact vs. opinion
  • proverbs
  • onomatopoeia 
It's a great site I've never heard of before, so I thought I'd spread the word. Check it out!

5 comments:

  1. I cannot wait to check this out.

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  2. Headed to check out the link now, sounds interesting. Thanks for sharing.

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  3. Ooo, that sounds great! Thanks for sharing the link. I love your new blog header - how fun!

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  4. Awesome! Thanks for the heads-up!

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  5. I think Wishbone did this book. I think he can be seen somewhere on cable now. My oldest is 2 years from college and next is 4 so we have to be diligent with school for high school transcripts and graduating on time, even if life happens. When they were much younger, I sat them in front of Wishbone, Reading Rainbow and Magic Schoolbus while I rested on the couch. I've never had anyone to help.
    Blessings,
    Laurie

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