photo

©Steven Astillero

Nature's Designs

Welcome to Ashland, Oregon

and the

Blenders Classroom

Our class has been studying about communities and what makes them special places. What makes our community like yours and what makes them each unique? We wanted to explore and celebrate the diverse ways in which people contribute and are a part of the community.

We are hoping that families with school age children might want to move to Ashland so we made this website to show some of our favorite and important places in our community.

Our Project Activities:

First, using Kidspiration, we brain stormed our ideas and created webs about communities.

Each student selected a special place in our community as their focus for the project. They called the site, made arrangements for an interview and visitation. Next, parents took small groups of students with digital cameras and clipboards to record information gathered from their interviews. These visits were great career education opportunities.

Map work included use of compasses, activities of latitude, longitude, and map reading. At Kid's Lab, students worked on the creation of a large table size model of Ashland. Each of their sites is represented on the model.

Students wrote and described for the world about their special Ashland Community site. Some students chose to use KidPix to create a computer generated drawing of their site while others chose to draw with crayons and pens.

The students presented their webpages and model to each other and to families in a final project celebration.