Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Penguin post!

In 2 weeks we have a celebrity visiting our classroom...SNOWBIRD! For those of you who don't know, Snowbird is the character on one local news station who announces school closings. Naturally, he's very popular among students and teachers. He will come to all the K classes and read a few books about penguins.

To prepare my students, we will be doing a mini-unit on penguins. I created this short fill-in-the-blank book for my students to complete as we learn more about penguins. I can't wait to see their illustrations for each page!
To download, check out my TpT website! This book is listed for just $2.50 and has 5 fill-in-the-blank pages- perfect for a week long study of penguins! 

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

A journey to the grasslands

 This quarter my students have been studying all about the grasslands. Because there are grasslands all over the world, we focused on the ones in Africa. We started by watching the opening scene from "The Lion King", which is great because it shows all of the different animals that live in the African savanna/grasslands.

Here's one of the boards outside my room showing off all their work and what they learned:



How cute are these lions? I cut strips of paper in yellow, brown and orange and showed my kinders how to curl them around a pencil. Great for fine motor skills and it kept them busy for a LONG time!

And here's the information we learned about lions:

I wrote it out with the blanks, and the kids helped me fill it in.

They made these elephants in Art class, so I'm not sure exactly how they did it. I can tell that they used paper plates and it looks like they cut a circle in a spiral shape for the trunk. Super cute!

And our elephant writing:

We talked about giraffes and all the different body parts. I traced the giraffe on butcher paper and painted it yellow. Then when it was dry each child got to add a spot and then we labeled it. I love doing this activity!

Our final project was a writing assignment. Each student had to pick an animal and give clues to have people try and guess which animal they were. I was really surprised at the level of my student's work! 
Translation: I live in the grasslands. I eat leaves. I have a long neck.

a giraffe

We did a lot more with this unit, including looking at zebras and using map skills to locate the grasslands on a map of Africa. Very proud of my kiddos and their work. They have come a long way from the beginning of the year! 

Friday, October 28, 2011

My little scientists

Have you been wondering where I went? Well, let's see...in the past few weeks, I have had to enter 11 grades per child per subject (11 grades x 6 subjects x 17 kids!) into a new computer grading system, I've been to Providence, RI to visit my sister and I've been to Jamaica for a much needed vacation!

But before all of that, I took my kids on a "learning expedition" to our local nature center. It is a great place that really does a fantastic job of introducing kids to nature. It's especially great for my little inner-city babies. They loved it!!

Here they are examining the frog pond:
I of course spent the entire time saying "don't lean so far! move back! not so close!" I was just convinced that someone would fall in. Luckily, we all stayed dry and even spotted a few frogs! We took a class picture in front of a huge sycamore tree that we'll visit again soon to see how it has changed with the season.

I am loving getting out and about and seeing what little scientists my kids are becoming! They are really exploring and discovering our world and I'm just so glad I can be a part of that.