How will you be celebrating Columbus Day with your students?

Columbus Day is celebrated in Spain and America. We celebrate on the 2^nd Monday in October.

A bit of history you may not know:

Columbus was turned down many times before receiving a thumbs up for his trip from Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. They promised much-- including land,  10% of all the revenues from the new lands, and he was to be dubbed “Admiral of the Seas” and would receive a portion of the profits, to name a few things in a very generous contract.   They didn’t really expect him to return.  Perhaps this is why they didn't really honor the contract.  Instead,  he was later arrested in 1500! After Columbus died, his sons Fernando and Diego took legal action. They battled through 1511! Court disputes continued ‘til 1790, almost 300 years from the time Columbus first set sail!

Between 1492 and 1503, Columbus completed four round-trip voyages between Spain and the Americas, all of them under the sponsorship of Isabella. These voyages marked the beginning of European Exploration and the colonization of our American continents.  Columbus, however, always insisted, even though there was a great deal of evidence proving him wrong,  that the lands he visited were part of Asia.  His refusal to see otherwise, might be the reason that America was named after the explorer Amerigo Vespucci and not Christopher Columbus.

Activities:

if you're wondering what to do with your students,  I’ve made up a few songs you can sing. You can also try, 3 Columbus Day Art Activities + an Easy Reader that’s sure to be a hit.  If you need to add a little geography to the day you'll want to print off  my Columbus Day Geography Book.  It's a Trace, Write, Cut and Glue activity.  Use it in class or send it home.  If you're looking for some table top skill sheets   to round out your morning routine, I've got just the thing!  A  maze, word find, an ABC skill builder sheet, a dot-to-dot (you choose how to count), a trace-to-pre-write, a pinch & poke, a match the columns, 2 dice games, and a ship spelling sheet!  To praise your students' efforts I also have a certificate.  Click on the link to check out this  42-page packet  Columbus Packet. This packet is free through July 2011 and then goes in the shopping cart for only .99 cents.

I save toilet paper, and paper towel tubes all year and have it on my "Save for me!" recycling list that I give to parents the first day of school, so when October arrives I have enough to make telescopes for Columbus Day. The children simply glue a pre-cut piece of brown paper on their paper towel tube.  We sit on our Circle of Friends carpet and look through our telescope and share what we think Columbus might have seen on the Ocean, and on land.  How was it different from what we see today. I bring in a real telescope for them to look in. 

Get Ready, Get Set, Read!

Besides reading a few stories about Columbus (I have several selections from Scholastic) I show them books about astronomy and tell them that captains of ships used the stars to tell where they were going.  Two books I also show pictures from are The Ships of Christopher Columbus by Xavier Pastor. It gives lots of details about the ships and includes some good pictures to share with your students. How We Learned The Earth Was Round by Patricia Lauber. It's also a great back ground book.  The author explains how people viewed the shape of the earth in early times, and describes the reasoning that led the Greeks to the conclusion that the earth was round.

Sharing:

I show my students a globe and pass around objects that are sphreres.  I explain to them that a lot of people didn't think that the earth was round.  They thought it was flat, and that if you sailed far enough you would fall off and die!  It was a very scary time when  people didn't know that others lived far away.  We take turns tossing a beach ball globe and sharing something that we are afraid of.   

Snack Time:

A fun snack if you have a parent who wants to fuss a bit, is to buy pears or peach halves.  Insert a tooth pick in a marshmallow and then into the pear or peach and you have a yummy fruit boat.

More Ideas:

To make a cute Nina, Pinta, or Santa Maria ship, Click on the link. Ships

To read a great synopsis of Columbus and view a neat slide show click on the link. This would be a wonderful computer center for the day.

To make a cool Spanish Ship click on the link.

For some outstanding Columbus Day coloring pages click on the link.  You can print them off and use them for your class or have students go to the site as a computer center and color them online!  My favorite is Columbus holding a scroll. I use it for name writing practice!   

So set sail today on your ocean of blue

and have fun making a voyage in 1492.