Our Wonder Women are on a quest to learn more about a topic. Ideally, they'd choose a topic they are curious about and explore it. Since this is our first project of this sort and it's all very new for them, we are taking a journey together first: to Italy.
What's not to love about Italy? There are so many things we could learn about: art, food, culture, landmarks, language, etc. There are plentiful resources that will help us in our quest and having just spent a few weeks there, I have resources of my own I can share. So, Italy it is!
Last week we brainstormed in teams different things they could learn about. Their goal was to come up a guiding, essential question.
One group decided to explore:
What's not to love about Italy? There are so many things we could learn about: art, food, culture, landmarks, language, etc. There are plentiful resources that will help us in our quest and having just spent a few weeks there, I have resources of my own I can share. So, Italy it is!
Last week we brainstormed in teams different things they could learn about. Their goal was to come up a guiding, essential question.
One group decided to explore:
- Why does the Leaning Tower of Pisa lean?
The other group will explore:
- How do they travel in India and Italy?
This week, we began our research. We looked in an atlas and found India in relation to Italy and located a few cities on the maps. We ended up with only one working computer so we did joint research on transport in Italy. Working from a list of possible questions we could ask, the girls used a Symbaloo webmix I curated to find resources.
They listed in their Wonder journals 4 types of transport in Italy:
We watched a video about how gondoliers steer gondolas and paused frequently to discuss and ask more questions. They colored their own gondolas for a bit and then I pulled out Google cardboard's Street View app and it was an instant hit. I have no photos of their excitement, since my phone was used in the viewer, but they loved it. In an instant they were transported to the Grand Canal. They looked around and saw gondolas parked next to red and white striped poles, vaporetto water busses going by, lots of people all around, and a few buildings that lined the canal.
We'll definitely be doing more of that!
They listed in their Wonder journals 4 types of transport in Italy:
- Car
- Train
- Boat
- Airplane
We watched a video about how gondoliers steer gondolas and paused frequently to discuss and ask more questions. They colored their own gondolas for a bit and then I pulled out Google cardboard's Street View app and it was an instant hit. I have no photos of their excitement, since my phone was used in the viewer, but they loved it. In an instant they were transported to the Grand Canal. They looked around and saw gondolas parked next to red and white striped poles, vaporetto water busses going by, lots of people all around, and a few buildings that lined the canal.
We'll definitely be doing more of that!
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