Mexico

This month our first grade social studies unit is called Places in Our World and we are studying Mexico! I have a connection with a first grade class in Monterrey, Mexico, and our class has been having fun and learning a lot partly through getting to know those students. The main focus of our unit is having students learn ways that we are similar and different from people in another country so this connection has been fabulous.

To begin, both our class and theirs made a video introducing ourselves and emailed the video to each other. After watching each other's videos both our class and theirs came up with questions for each other and emailed those. One thing both classes were very interested in was the big difference in weather between our two cities. In our video we showed the snow we had on our playground and we noticed that in their video they were all wearing shorts and t-shirts! I pasted our questions below so you can see what the classes asked each other.

Last Wednesday we Skyped with the class in Monterrey and asked/answered the questions we had come up with. It was very meaningful for the kids to get to talk to each other in real time and the kids' biggest take-away was that they have so much in common! The kids in the other class are the same age as the kids in our class, they like many of the same foods, toys, and sports, and they have mostly the same types of pets and wild animals that we find here. The main differences we noticed were that they wear uniforms to school, they speak Spanish as well as English, and it is very hot where they live/never snows!

We asked them:
What is your weather like in Monterrey during the different seasons? What is the weather like now?

What type of wild animals live near Monterrey?

What type of animals do you have as pets?

What are your favorite foods?

Do you have a playground and recess time at school?

What kinds of toys do you like?

Do you have weekends off from school and when do you have school vacations?

How many kids are in your class and at your school?

Do you have special events like parades or festivals in your town?

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They asked us:

1. How do kids have to get dressed to go to school in winter?

2. What type of wild animals live in Vermont?

3. Which places do kids visit in their vacation time?

4. What kind of games do they play when it is snowing?

5. Do kids in Vermont ski in snow?

6. How is the weather during each season?

7. What type of food do they like to eat?