We continued our biography unit with Alexander Graham Bell who was a remarkable man in many respects. His efforts despite some powerful hinderances allowed me to add additional themes of perseverance despite failures and mistakes, disability awareness, compassion and serving others. We also met Helen Keller in this unit who was my personal inspiration to become a teacher.
Alexander is known for inventing the phone. But he was really interested in inventing a tool to aide those he taught at a few schools for the deaf and his mother who was deaf. So he and his father were instrumental in understanding the ear and invented the first hearing aide and sign language. This is especially powerful for myself as I have worn hearing aides much of my adult life and could show the children like the phones how his inventions have changed.
Naturally, this book also linked to science and inventions. ( He made so many!) We continued to write daily in our response journals as we learned more and more about this man but we also made his first phone!
This was a great book that nicely introduced the idea of inventions and kicked off our toy invention creating and writing.
We watched a few videos about Alexander, telephones, the ear anatomy etc. BUT this song was their favorite! "Pizza Please!" they still sing this song months later !