Awesome Kansas Info Day!

Today was one of those unanticipated, out-of-the-blue fun experiential days.  A student's grandparents came to visit our room, bringing an unexpected fun experience for the kids - getting to not just feel, but SIT ON, a buffalo hide.  This child's grandparents have buffalo at their home, and they shared all kinds of interesting facts, photos, and hands-on skulls/hide with our class! Definitely the highlight of the day for many of the kids in our class!
Then we had our school-wide spelling bee, with Hana and Daphne representing our class.  Both of our girls did a fantastic job of representing 4th grade, and it was fun to watch BGS kids have a spell-off!
And then our class received 2 "Traveling Trunks" from the Kansas State Historical Society.  This is an AMAZING program that sends trunks full of lessons, artifacts, and other hands-on activity pieces to classrooms in Kansas for FREE!  They have a series geared toward meeting 4th grade social studies standards, and we signed up for our limit in the summer, and they arrived today. It was so much fun to begin unpacking them at the end of the day - we "ooooh"ed and "aaaah"ed as we pulled out hides and bones and photos and tipi parts.  We get to use the trunks for two weeks before shipping them back, and I can't wait to share all of the "goodies" with the kids next week!
Have a wonderful 3-day weekend!
Carla Goertzen

 Our girls in the spelling bee - look how far they've made it!

 Checking out the buffalo skull (above) and the hide (below).  I was astonished by how soft it was!

These are models of Native American dwellings that are native to KS - a grass hut, a tipi, and an earth lodge.  I  unpacked this layer after school, so the kids haven't seen these yet!