We began this theme, as a leaping point into the world of Social Studies, History and Geography. Here it is from the MSWord doc I wrote. I would like to be able to put these Themes in PDF when I learn to do that.

Sense of Self, Sense of Place

(Our family began this Theme Study in November 2005. It was a good fit for us as we had just moved into a new house. I felt K was old enough to be grounded in a sense of her-self and where she lived, and I felt it was important to do that before we began learning about her wider world in any kind of deeper ways than we have already done. We will revisit this with L when he is a little older.)

We begin with personal history, a sense of self and place and belonging. We answer the questions: Who am I? Where to I belong?

Goals: K ought to be able to celebrate herself for who she is, to ground sense of self, and to begin to identify her many roles- Daughter, big sister, granddaughter, friend, neighbour, student. She will establish that she is connected to family and to friends in many ways.

K will be able to identify her address, her phone number, her neighborhood, city, state and country.

K will complete a personal history of her life so far. (Autobiography)

K will begin to learn about the history of Irvington, and the geography of Indiana.

Beginning Activities
(Intrinsic/Self) Make a full body portrait of yourself! Lie down on a length of butcher paper, trace body shape and illustrate yourself! What kind of clothes do you wear? How do you wear your hair? Write your full name on yourself!

Personal History: Talk about the day you were born. Look at some baby photos, have mum or dad share your birth story. What was happening in the world at the time you were born? (Extrinsic/Neighbourhood)
Your house: Draw a picture, take a photo of your house. What is your address? (learn off by heart.) What is your phone number? (learn by heart)

Map: Draw a map of the inside of your house. Where is your bedroom? Where is the kitchen? Where do you keep your favourite books? Where do you brush your teeth? Mark it all on the map you've made of your house!

Neighbourhood: Can you identify the name of your neighbourhood? (or Suburb etc) How did it come to be called that? What are some ways you can find out?

Continuing Activities

(Intrinsic/Self) Sharing Time: Talk about our family history. When did mummy and daddy meet? Look at wedding photos. When did our family move to our house? Can you remember moving?

(Extrinsic/Neighbourhood) Neighbours: Who are your neighbours? Can you think of something nice to do for your neighbours? Let's work on doing something nice, like baking cookies, making a card etc for our neighbours.
House Age: How old is our house? When was it built? How can we find out? How can we find out more about our house and it's history? What is the history of our neighbourhood? Where can I find a map of our neighbourhood? What are some other things in our neighbourhood? Can we find our house on the map? Can we find the other things, like the park and the library? How about looking for our friend's houses?
Learning our Address: Our house number is the beginning of our address. What is our house number? Let's look for it on the outside of our house. (Let's think about going to the hardware store and finding some larger numerals for our house!)

Continuing Activities
(Intrinsic/Self)

Relationship Web: Talk about who you are. Daughter, big sister, friend, granduaghter. Make a web of the relationships that involve you! (use large butcher pape. Put yourself in the center of the paper)
(Extrinsic/Neighborhood)
Walking Tour: Take a walk somewhere in the neighbourhood, to the park or over to a friend's house, talk about the other houses around our house. Note any historic or important places. Talk about these places and their importance to where you live. Note the house structures- would you say they are similar? How are they the same, and how are they different? Refer to a book of American architechture if necessary.
House History: Start work on a book about the history of our house, as we gather information, or learn more. Talk to librarian about what is needed for the Historical Registry. Talk about the year our house was built and what life was like then. (American Girls book from the library?) Plan a dinner based on what a dinner would have been like in 1925. Shop for ingredients together from a list.
Felt Map: We made a Felt Floor Map of our nieghbourhood. It is large enough that L and K can drive their toy cars on it, and build blocks for houses etc. I made it by buying a 2 yard length of felt from a fabric store, and tracing a grid in pencil on it. I printed out a map of our neighbourhood from Yahoo Maps and traced a grid over it, and transferred it, square by square in a fabric marker. We've made it a fairly decent size, so it covered things like the library, several friends' homes, the park, the coffee shop. It was important to include these places that have personal meaning. I did the work of making the map, but K helped in many ways. She chose the key and symbols. She chose simple shapes that she could cut out from felt of another colour. The felt sticks together and we were able to use this feature in play. The symbols were shapes to mark our house, friends houses, places we visit. (We took a tangent while we were making this felt map, and learned a little about maps, and cartography.)

Other supplementary activities: Circle in a circle Concept: Begin by having K draw a picture of herself and label it with her full name. Cut it out in the shape of a circle. Cut a larger circle and label it Irvington, putting Kahli in the center of it, and gluing it down. Make another larger circle, labeling it Indianapolis, etc etc, making larger concentric circles, fitting the smaller circles inside every time.

Autobiography: (We did this writing activity with a friend) We did a cut and paste activity sheet that includes prompts for writing your story. We read a biography, I wrote my own as a sample. I included prompts in a basket, in case we ran out of ideas. I started out encouraging K (and her friend) to introduce themselves and where they were born. Then they free wrote, in a very cooperative way. We had to take a five minute silence break, because they were so enthusiastic about writing together.

Address a letter to self: K addressed a letter to me! She put it in the mailbox for me to find when I got mail! We made up a rhyme for her to learn her mailing address. I wanted to put a stamp on it and mail it at a post box, but K wanted me to get it sooner than that!

Visit Local History Center: We took a visit to the Bona Thomson history center. K and her friend we took with us were a little bored, but we did learn that our house was a part of a historical record, and a gentleman copied what he had about it onto a piece of paper for us! It was the beginning of us learning more about our house.

Conclusions: There is more that I wanted to do to extend on these activities. I will add to these activities and ideas as we revisit this Theme!

© Anna Noack-Brown 2005.