Riding the Planet offers a wide range of classroom activities that will bring to life your K-8 Social Studies curriculum. This book incorporates photography, imagery, art, drama, children's literature, music, MI's, and a host of other teaching tools guaranteed to engage your students, more eagerly, with a better understanding of cultures, history, geography, economics, sociology, global issues, and other aspects of social studies that make up a complete and whole subject. Using the 393 pages of unique, fun filled, standard-based lessons, students will, among other things, take a trip around the world on a felt board. They will be guests at a Historical Dinner Party and meet famous people from time past. Your students will learn about rivers by creating an eight-foot river of their choice and build a complete environment on its banks. The class will use sticks and stone games to help solve arguments and bad feelings. Your boys and girls will follow a loaf of bread or a pair of socks from conception to consumption. They will play games about People, Places and Environment, and make jigsaw puzzles about famous places in the world. Students will use math skills to learn about their state. They will write biographies from information found on the trunks of trees. They will learn how a school cafeteria really functions, and through Common Good experiences, boys and girls may understand how to function as good citizens. This book will assess the students' understanding of concepts and facts, and ask them to reflect upon important issues that have been brought to them in a living, breathing manner. Perhaps more than anything, however, your students will be able to Ride the Planet with everything that makes them who they are. They will use their brains, of course, but also their eyes, heart, ears, legs, voice and hands. And with all of that going on, your kids may never, ever again, have to think about Abe Lincoln's tall, tall hat, or George Washington's big old wooden teeth. Hallelujah