Lesson Plan

Getting Ready

Overview

It takes a little prep to find people to host your Travel Pal. Here are some ideas on how to find caretakers!

Objective

Students will:
  • Contribute to a class made scrapbook about themselves, their school and community
  • Operate and download photos from a digital camera and use iPhoto so they can help to crop and choose pictures for the class scrapbook
  • Learn how to access and respond to email
  • Use the internet to research and report on cities, famous sites and places
  • Learn how to navigate Google Earth and Google Maps to observe the places that the Travel Pal visits
  • Illustrate books, brochures, posters, poems, stories and more
  • Use map skills to keep track of places their Travel Pal has been,
  • Recall the location of states and cities on the U.S. map
  • Write narratives, letters and informational posters during activities related to the adventures of their Travel Pal

Materials

  1. Most importantly, choose a Travel Pal or two. Garage sales are great places to pick up cheap, cute, Ty-style beanie babies. These little beanie babies travel very well in the mail!
  2. Make sure you have a large binder for each Travel Pal. Inside the binder will be the scrapbook pages your students create, informational pages for the caretaker and blank pages for your caretakers to add create scrapbooks of their own. I chose to use thick tag board pages to make sure that whatever was attached to them would stay throughout the duration of the Pals journey.
  3. You will need a digital camera for several activities.
  4. You will need access to the Internet either in a computer lab, or on a large classroom computer or with a laptop and projector.
  5. I used a wonderful History Channel educational series called "The States" to jumpstart each lesson about a new state our Pals visit. You can find it for about $30 on The History Channel Website - it was worth every cent! You may be able to find a second hand copy on eBay or Amazon.com. While you don't need this item to have a successful project. I believe it was a main component to our successful project. http://shop.history.com/detail.php?p=70012&SESSID=ba09343a7876b2e69bb594ec18527d10&v=All
  6. Start saving clippings of photos from the local paper showing scenes around your city. You can also go to the local visitor's center to pick up brochures about your city, which usually have maps and great color photos.
  7. The rest of the items you will need are the basics; markers, glue, scissors, pencils, glitter, stickers, construction paper, tag board etc.

Directions

  1. Decide weather you want to have just one Travel Pal or a few. I actually used four Travel Pals for my project, but this project would be just as effective with one Travel Pal.
  2. Set up an email especially for this project. I promise it will help you keep track of things in the long run! Mine was metz.travelpals@yahoo
  3. Contact everyone you know through email and ask them if they would be willing to host a Travel Pal or if they know someone else who might be interested.
  4. Gather materials for the project.
  • Subjects:
    Social Studies, Arts and Crafts, Letter Writing, Communication and the Internet, Computers
  • Skills:
    Maps, Online Sources, Social Studies, Research Skills, Descriptive Writing
  • Duration:
    40 Weeks
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