Welcome to Social Studies in a Kindergarten Classroom!
Have you heard of PBS Teachers? Well if you haven't then you are surely missing out. PBS Teachers is a great website for teacher resources. And the best part about it... it's FREE!
So what exactly does PBS say about itself:
"PBS Teachers is PBS' national web destination for high-quality preK-12 educational resources. Here you'll find classroom materials suitable for a wide range of subjects and grade levels. We provide thousands of lesson plans, teaching activities, on-demand video assets, and interactive games and simulations. These resources are correlated to state and national educational standards and are tied to PBS' award-winning on-air and online programming like NOVA, Nature, Cyberchase, Between the Lions and more."
Fast Facts:
- the website is broken up by grade levels which makes it easier to find a certain topic you're looking for
- resource tabs include: the arts, health and fitness, math, reading and language arts, science and tech, as well as social studies
- a featured column on the main page that displays the current news
- teacher discussion chat rooms are a great place to share ideas
- pbs teachers blog is a great place to find and share resources
So How Can You Use It?
Next week my Kindergarten class is learning all about Transportation in their community. So I thought it would be a great idea to see what PBS Teachers had on my topic. I simply logged in and then typed in "transportation" in the search box on the upper right side of the screen. Once I hit search there were 160 matches that were found. I scrolled down to the 7th activity called, "Taking A Ride." Hit the "details button" to see what the lesson has to offer. Next I clicked "view resource."
Displayed is a great detailed list of what the activity is and what you will need. I think Kindergartners will love this activity and that's it's very age appropriate. I think I would take the lesson one step further and ask my Principal if I could take the students on a tour of the community near the school and then come back and draw what we saw on the poster board. When you take the tour you could even make bus tickets for the students to give the bus driver!
For the full lesson plan click here.
