You may notice your child talking about 'doing dinosaurs' or 'having an election' as part of our studies. And, indeed, if you walked into our rooms towards the end of the any month, you may find yourself in an 'ocean' or 'Japan'! These are the themes that we tie a lot of reading, writing, math, science and social studies into.

The themes are based on the 1^st and 2^nd Grade Science and Social Studies outcomes for our district. Because we're in a 2 year rotation, we can work with half the 1^st Grade outcomes and half the 2^nd Grade outcomes each year. This avoids repetition and keeps things quite lively in our room!

These themes also allow us to 'cover' all the different topics, skills, and strategies that are necessary for two grade levels' worth of kids. For example:

• During our Ocean study, we have lots of non-fiction books on different levels that students can read individually or with a partner.
• After reading, they can present their new knowledge either in the form of a report or a presentation poster, which involved a lot of writing or a computer slideshow, or a puppet show, or a triorama, etc.
• Following the science outcomes, we sort different kinds of ocean animals, identify mammals and fish, study their habitats, and find out about food chains.
• We use the ocean animals during math to make up story problems, measure lengths of the whale family mammals, chart characteristics and habitats, and multiply by 1, 2, 5, and 10 to find totals (How many eyes would 5 flounders have?)
• We tie our Ocean study neatly into the social studies outcome regarding map reading by locating and recording the oceans of the world, mapping possible travel routes between countries, etc.
• We even cover some health topics by looking at water safety!

You can see that themes are wonderfully interesting ways to accomplish much of what we do in our primary classes.