Travel Agents Coming Soon!

We are going on spring break Thursday and will return April 13th.  At that time we will be getting our newest project off to it’s first post about places in North Carolina and the United States to visit.

 We look forward to learning about places in Ireland at that time with students from – Greystones,  Wicklow County, Ireland and the class called If Only the Best Birds Sang   and teaching them about our country as we explore places to visit.

  •   If you were a travel agent for your country what places would you recommend to visitors.  If you’d like to join our project we’d love to hear from you too!  We’d like to hear from more classes around the world about a special place in your country.  

We will also be completing our castle projects during April.  The second grade international club is working on their castle challenge to complete their own castle out of recyclable materials by April 14th.  Look for their designs then.  The students in the rest of the school will learn about castles that week during Global Studies.

The International Club students also took a virtual field trip last week to Australia and the Outback thanks to Ross Mannell who prepared  extended comments for us to visit around Australia since a real trip was not possible.  We were amazed how flat and red it is there. We have  white-tailed deer but not kangaroos. The deer cross the road and get hit by cars, they come in our yards and run off when we appear and some people eat venison meat. We have possum not echinda.  We have ostrichs but not emu.   Where we live we have more green.  The trees are leafless during the winter other than evergreens and some grass is still green and many shrubs.  Now that it is spring everything is turning green.

 

April 2012-mountain 002Farm 2012

This week we went back to England, Scotland and Wales to learn about foods which was made possible through Project Britain by Mandy Barrow. The students were amazed about eating baked beans for breakfast.  We have a different kind of biscuit that is bread and used for breakfast a lot in the US.   Mrs. Todd had learned about foods in Mrs. Monaghan’s home a few years ago when she took time to share with her class items in her pantry.  Some were very different from ours like chips and fries.  Some cereal looked similar.   Mrs. Harlow lives in England and is here teaching some of us as a visiting teacher.   These teachers are helping us study about these two areas of the world.  We’d like your help too!!

We wonder if Ireland eats the same kind of foods as England, Scotland and Wales?

International Club lasted a few weeks for about 20 energetic seven and eight year old’s.  We did dot art painting of kangaroos and other animals, visited the Outback and saw life there, learned about the Aboriginal people in Australia , learned about Castles and foods from Europe.  Our focus country is Australia and our Visiting teacher is from England so we learn about both places which is interesting to compare.   Our last week after break will be learning a dance from England, learning about schools in Australia and sharing our castles.

We hope some of you can join us in learning about places in Greystones Ireland and North Carolina/USA.  Perhaps you’ll share some of your special places with us during this project.

HAPPY SPRING BREAK AND WE’LL SEE YOU IN APRIL!

Let Us Hear from You…….. about Castles

We know there are special castles out there so let us hear from you about one.   Even if you are in the United States tell us about a different one.  We can look them up on the internet but we think it’s a lot more fun to have someone write on our blog about the castle and what makes it special to them.

You can’t add your own pictures in a comment but send Mrs. Todd a picture and she will add it to the site so everyone can see your castles.

 

Do you know the parts of a castle?  Have you read about different castles in books you’ve been reading?  You can even tell us about one of these if you don’t have a real one to write about.

 

 

Middleham Castle (A Room with a View)

Mrs. Monaghan had commented about the castle outside their classroom (A Room with a View) and mentioned their blog site and the picture of their castle.  Below are pictures taken from that site. See the original post about Castles Around the World to see her answers to our inquiry questions about castles.

They are located 2 hours from Scotland and 3 hours from London.

They are located 2 hours from Scotland and 3 hours from London.

 

Picture used from A Room with a View (blog site) of Middleham Castle.

Picture used from A Room with a View (blog site) of Middleham Castle.Middleham Castle

 

Castles, Castles Do you have one?

We decided to do some inquiry learning and investigate castles around the world.  We need your help to learn about special castles in your area.   Please help us out by answering some of our questions.

  1. Where is your special castle located?  Continent/Country/City
  2. When was it built?  How old is it?
  3. Why was it built?
  4. Who lived in the castle?   Does anyone still live there?
  5. Is it used for other purposes now?
  6. Do you have more than one castle within 25 miles of your school/home? or even 50, 75, 100 miles away.  Tell us about that one also.
  7. How many rooms in your castle?   Where there unusual rooms in the castle?
  8. What is your castle built with?  Describe the outside of the castle.
  9. Does your castle have a drawbridge?  
  10. Is the castle built in the city, a small town or rural area?   Why do you think this was a good spot for the castle?  Tell us about the land features around the castle.
  11. Describe the inside of the castle.   
  12. Does it cost to visit the castle if it’s open for public viewing?

 

North Carolina is one of the 50 states in the USA.  Asheville NC is in the blue NC is green.

North Carolina is one of the 50 states in the USA. Asheville NC is in the blue NC is green.

North Carolina-  Asheville   35° 32′ 22.74″ N, 82° 33′ 3.42″ W     35.53965, -82.55095

biltmore 3 biltmore 4

Winter at the Biltmore and the Blue Ridge Mountains

Winter at the Biltmore and the Blue Ridge Mountains

 

Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina

Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina

 

Biltmore Estates Asheville, North Carolina

Biltmore Estates Asheville, North Carolina

biltmore_fall2009 biltmore_estate_garden_600x biltmore 2

Biltmore Estate is a large private estate in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Asheville, North Carolina.  Tourist pay to go see it throughout the year.  It was built between 1889 and 1895 in a Chateauesque-style. It is the largest privately owned home and is owned by a descendant of the Vanderbilt’s.  It is 178,926 square feet of floor space and 135,280 square feet of living area.  It was built by George Washington Vanderbilt II and is on the US National Register of Historic Places and Landmarks. Richard Morris Hunt was the building architect and Frederick Law Olmsted was the landscape architect. Vanderbilt’s estate was modeled after two other impressive houses. One of these was a manor in Buckinghamshire, England called the Waddesdon Manor. The other was Chateau de Blois in the Loire Valley in France.

Vanderbilt wanted his home to follow the traditional agrarian model, which included a main manor house with tenant farms, a small town, a church, and a school. He put so much work into the building process because he wanted the estate to be self-sustaining and produce its own income.   It had its own herds of sheep, swine, poultry, dairy herd,  gardens, and nurseries.  An on-site kiln produced up to 32,000 bricks daily, and a woodworking factory supplied oak and walnut for the house’s floors and walls.  Indiana limestone, Italian marble and other supplies were shipped into Asheville by rail. Inside, the house is distinctively English. The country estates of Knole, Hatfield House and Haddon Hall provided guidance for the design of the interiors while they found inspiration for the house’s exterior in the 16th-century chateaux of Loire Valley, France. The stair tower and steeply pitched roof line were inspired by three specific chateaux: Blois, Chenonceau and Chambord.

Biltmore has four acres of floor space and a total of 250 rooms in the house including 33 bedrooms for family and guests, 43 bathrooms, 65 fireplaces and three kitchens.  There are four floors and a basement area that had a swimming pool, gym and bowling alley.  At Christmas they decorate with around 15,000 strings of lights and 41 decorated trees for visitors.  During spring they have the Festival of Flowers when the gardens are blooming with over 100,000 different colors of tulips.  During summer many roses and other plants bloom. The Biltmore house is the largest home on the property but there are other buildings on the Estate. There are 125,000 acres around the estate area.

The name Biltmore comes from Holland and England not their names.  “Bilt” is a region that belongs to the Vanderbilt family in Holland and “more” refers to the countryside that is quite hilly in Old English terms.  The area of Asheville is in the mountains of North Carolina and the Biltmore Estate is hilly.

The Vanderbilt’s wanted to help others so in 1889 the Vanderbilt’s took considerable pleasure in founding the Biltmore Forest School, the first institute for scientific forestry in America. George and Edith also founded Biltmore Estate Industries in 1901, for the purpose of creating an apprenticeship program to teach traditional crafts such as weaving and woodworking. Students enjoyed creating many things, including reproductions of furnishings within the mansion and were encouraged to sell their works for income.

George and Edith’s only child, Cornelia (1900-1976) was married at the All Soul’s Church in Biltmore Village in 1924 to the honorable John Francis Amherst Cecil (1890-1954). Cecil was a descendant of Lord Burghley, the Lord High Treasurer to Queen Elizabeth I.

Biltmore Estates Asheville, North Carolina

Biltmore Estates Asheville, North Carolina

Boyd, Louise. dsc01641.jpg. June 2004. Pics4Learning. 18 Feb 2015 <http://pics.tech4learning.com>