Skip to main content

The Maya

   Summary of Book: The Maya was written by Stefanie Takacs. This book talks about the Maya culture, or their way of life. The book has different subjects within it such as the daily life of an average Maya person, ancient Maya beliefs, what happened when the Europeans arrived, and then how the Maya civilization is today.


Why you would/would not use this book in your classroom? I would use this book in my classroom because it talks about a really unique culture from the past that students could learn from and take away key information from. 

Appropriate age for this book: 6-11

Ideas for unit of study to include this book or how you might use this book in the classroom: I think an idea of how to use this book in a classroom would be to read the story to the kids and have pictures up of Mayan art and their civilization. And then at the end of the reading instruct the students to recreate their own Mayan art based off what they had learned about them in the book we just read and also based off the pictures I had shown them while we had been reading. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Balloons Over Broadway

   Summary of Book: Balloons over Broadway was written and illustrated by Melissa Sweet. The story starts with talking about Tony Sarg and that he became a Marionette man when he was only 6 years old. When he grew uo he moved to London to continue to create his marionettes and eventually moved to New York where his popularity continued to grow. Macy's asked Sarg to create a "puppet parade" for his holiday window. And his mechanical marionettes danced and thrilled the little children who passed. Macy's decided to create a parade for immigrants that would include a street carnival from all over the world. As the parade went on, it grew more and more until it had grown to much and the real animals scared the children to much. So Macy's requested Tony to change the animals. So he decided to make much larger marionettes that could be held up in the sky. However, to make sure they were not to heavy, he made them balloons and filled them with helium. He made sure they we...

Drummer Boy At Bull Run

    Summary of Book: In this series of 10 books written by Gilbert Morris, Drummer Boy at Bull Run is the first one we see of the series. In this series it follows the families of the Majors and Carters during the civil war. The Majors support the South and the Carters support the North and both families are involved in the war. The series center around Jeff Majors and Leah Carter. These two are best friends. Jeff follows his older brother and father to fight on the side of the South as a drummer boy, and Leah joins her father and follows the North army with her father in a wagon with food and supplies. In this story it follows the effects the war has on both families and also involves talking about wars and seeing the effects of death. At the end of the story we see Jeff go back home to celebrate his birthday with Leah as they share the same birthday. Why you would/would not use this book in your classroom? I would have this book in my school library because it is a really in...

The Tale of Despereaux

    Summary of Book: The Tale of Despereaux was written by Katie Dicamillo and is the recipient of the Newberry Award. The story follows the very brave, noble mouse Despereaux. He does not fit in with the rest of his family as he is able to see and actually enjoys reading. This story follows several intertwining stories involving a rat in a dungeon that plots to get revenge on the princess and uses a girl that was sold by her father to do so. And we see that Despereaux is in love with the princess and wants to save her from the rats evil plot. In the end, we see Despereaux was able to save the princess and they remain best friends, the rat is given free range of the castle, and the girl is reunited with the father that sold her and he is so remorseful.  Why you would/would not use this book in your classroom? I don't think I would use this book in my classroom because I'm not sure I see the value of having my students read this book. The fairytale aspect wasn't really the...