My Community Scrapbook Project

We are about to begin one of my favorite units--community!  Each year, we go all out and make a huge  3-d map of our city, complete with the most adorable kid-created milk carton houses.  I hope to share pictures of the finished product by next week.  This year, I have added a community scrapbook that I hope the kids will love and keep forever!  As we study our community, we will glue in maps, go "shopping" at local stores, add menus from local restaurants, create paper cars and driver's licenses to learn about our major highway, and more.  I can not WAIT to get started with this project!

Here is an example of the "Shop 'Til You Drop" page.  The kids will glue in a paper sack, and cut out food pictures from a magazine.  They will pop the bag out and put their "purchases" inside.  They will also glue a logo from a local grocery store to the front of the bag!  

***Parents...this is where I will need your help!  Please send in magazines for us to cut apart!  

P.S.  In case you are wondering, HGTV Magazine ROCKS!*** 

They will also draw their favorite restaurants.  I think I might go around to a few local restaurants and ask them to donate bags, fry boxes, etc.  to glue in our books.

So, that is my paper car.  It doesn't look like a car at all!  Oh well.  Also, 280 never has just one car.  I need to add many more to make it look like the crazy traffic jam it always is--sad, but true!  For this page, I also want to take pictures of all the kids, and shrink them down so I can add their real photo to the driver's license. So fun!  If I were a kid, I would probably totally cut that out when I got home, and pretend to "drive" my bike like a car.  HA!  I don't want to tell them that, though. 

We are also beginning a cool little project to get our families out into the community!  Meet "Flat Chelsea" and "Flat Chip":

These little cuties are going home with my first graders this week.  They will take a picture of themselves and their new flat friend somewhere in our community, and then write about their adventures!  I know they will be so excited to know they can take these home tomorrow!!!  

Teachers, what is your favorite idea for teaching communities?  

I will give away one of my scrapbooks to the 10th person to comment!!!!