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Empire Building

Gwen Duralek

This week, while I've been watching the Great British Bake Off, I started thinking about the "building" part of these various tasks that the bakers face. They are able to craft quite spectacular creations out of flour, sugar, and eggs,  and it dawned on me as I was planning my next week's activities -- let's literally build empires. 

I've loved doing the Frankenempire or autopsy versions of this activity, but this time, I'm going to work with my students to build gingerbread empires  And, yes, I think we will cap this off with actual gingerbread or graham cracker houses to form a village. 

Using this template to create the six sides of the house out of cardstock (two roof pieces, two side pieces, and two end pieces) for the five componets: political, military, economic, social, weakness...and a bonus side for showcasing a piece of art or architecture from the empire). Fingers crossed that the students will see where I'm heading with this. 

    

Parents

  • Alrighty .. I'm leveling up on this mini-unit on empire building. While my students are working in small groups to dissect their assigned empire, then constructing their paper gingerbread houses first then real gingerbread houses as a treat ... I'll use the Comanche & Oceania info to provide them with models of how to do this empire in miniature. 

      This morning, some of my more challenging students were super excited that we are going to make gingerbread houses, so I'll take that happiness and layer in learning as we proceed. I'm hoping that this all works out in a fun, hands-on, student-paced way of learning. 

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  • Alrighty .. I'm leveling up on this mini-unit on empire building. While my students are working in small groups to dissect their assigned empire, then constructing their paper gingerbread houses first then real gingerbread houses as a treat ... I'll use the Comanche & Oceania info to provide them with models of how to do this empire in miniature. 

      This morning, some of my more challenging students were super excited that we are going to make gingerbread houses, so I'll take that happiness and layer in learning as we proceed. I'm hoping that this all works out in a fun, hands-on, student-paced way of learning. 

Children