In our last blog post, we talked about how Cooltopia was founded and named. Today, we are going to look a little at how we have started to plan Cooltopia.
During our reading mini-lessons, we have started to read Curious George books. Not only have we started to look at George’s physical and personality traits, but we have also started to look at the jobs, shops, buildings, and other things that are found in the town where George is. For example, we were reminded about a town having a fire station in the book Curious George and the Firefighters. We realized there needed to be a place for cars and trucks and a place for animals when we read Curious George and the Dump Truck. We saw there could be many jobs like a cook, window washer, painters in the book Curious George Takes a Job. We also were reminded about hospitals, restaurants, and other shops in that same book.
We read a little more about maps through the book As the Crow Flies. The students were very curious about the different maps and it was very surprising to see all the animal maps put together into a larger map of the area. We found out we will be creating a map of our town, but we first needed to figure out what we wanted to put into the town.
This led to a discussion of what the needs and wants of a town might be. This discussion took the form of listing what stores and other buildings we might want to have in the town. We found out we are going to be creating some of these stores with a partner or two. The students are very excited! Be looking for more information about Cooltopia after the Thanksgiving Break!