Brrrr! It's Cold Outside!

Recipe from: Disney Family Fun! 

Our Tips 

This recipe yields enough for two kids to each make a sculpture or two, but if friends are over (as they often are on winter weekends), definitely double the ingredient amounts.

Put out decorative "stick-ons" in little bowls or paper cups. Fun embellishments, as shown above, include sequins, tacks, keys, cup hooks, soda-can tabs, nuts, bolts, washers, and screws. The end piece from a lamp pull-chain makes a nice bell to hang on a reindeer's neck.

A cookie sheet covered with waxed paper can serve as a drying rack (sculptures take a few days to harden).

Materials

• 2/3 cup salt
• 1/3 cup baking soda

• 1/2 cup cornstarch

Instructions

1. In a small saucepan, mix the salt and baking soda with 1/3 cup of water and bring to a boil.
2. In a small bowl, combine the cornstarch and 1/4 cup of water and stir well.
3. When the salt mixture boils, remove it from the heat and add the cornstarch mixture. Stir vigorously for a minute or two to thicken the clay. Spoon it onto a sheet of waxed paper and allow it to cool before working with it.
   
   
   
   I could not wait to give this a try and I really had tons of fun testing this out and making mine. I can't wait to get back to school and try this with my Kinder Friends. This was super easy to make but would not be something that I would make with the kids. I had some leftover clay and I am storing it in a container and will see how long it lasts. My best guess is that you would make it the night before you need it at school. The recipe above is enough for two children so you are going to have to make numerous batches in a big pot. Have fun and check back because snow is coming to Texas! 

Shadow Investigations!

Hello Scientists! 

We have been learning about Light and Shadows right along with Sid the Science Kid! We have had so much fun and want you to join in the fun! Are you ready? If you want to learn more about light and shadows take a look inside the learning lab.  

If you want to get the lesson plan click HERE! 

Free is Snow Much Fun!

Hello Science Friends, 

I wanted to share with you a freebie that I have made for my class to practice patterning. I have uploaded it to my TpT store for you to grab. I am having a sale at both of my stores through the end of the year! I have been working on seasonal sorts to give my class more practice with sorting and classification and I needed a few things on hand for our Science Notebooks. We all have loved notebooking through Science this year. I am looking forward to all things Science and sharing those experiences on this blog. I am running to my mailbox each day waiting on something so scientifically fantastic to share with you in the coming days but I guess for now the freebie will have to do! 

New Beginnings!

It is hard to believe that Christmas is over and we now turn our focus to other things. As I was preparing and thinking about what is coming up next in Science, I thought about Sensory Tubs again. As part of our upcoming Science Unit, we have used our sand and water table for some icy exploration. I was curious if there were some other ideas out there that I could use. Naturally, I turned to Pinterest to get my creative juices flowing. 

Source: countingcoconuts.blogspot.com via Little Miss Kindergarten on Pinterest

I LOVE going to Counting Coconuts for Sensory Tub inspiration. 

Source: countingcoconuts.blogspot.com via Little Miss Kindergarten on Pinterest

Before I head back to school I am going to start gathering some materials in a bag for my sensory tubs.

Source: handmadebeginnings.blogspot.com via Little Miss Kindergarten on Pinterest

Before you pack up all that Christmas stuff you might want to take a second look and see if you already have on hand some items that you could use.

Source: search.aol.com via Little Miss Kindergarten on Pinterest

More ice explorations will be posted as we explore Penguins and Their Young by Lawrence Hall of Science. If you are looking for something to help you teach Science to young children, I recommend this book and the other books in this series. 

Merry Christmas Science Friends!

Merry Christmas Science Friends. I hope to share the love of Science with you this next year. As I was grabbing this card and stalking Ladybug's Teacher Files I thought many of you would get some fabulous ideas from that blog like I do. OM~gosh the organization is to die for! Check it out! 

Santa's Big Race!

In our last week of school we just had to squeeze in some Science Fun! We got busy talking finishing up our unit on Force, Motion and Energy! In order to learn about movement we were using wind up toys and pull cars.

We used Duplos to build the lanes needed for Santa's Big Race! We predicted which car would win and charted those predictions. We did the same for the wind up toys. It seems that Santa was a favorite this year even though our elf had the coolest car around! 

We started our races and as you can imagine... we had tons of fun. I suppose the picture here is worth a 1000 words because Santa and friends were moving pretty darn fast. 

We moved on to our wind up toys and set up our races. And as you can imagine our wind up toy race was pretty slow but still very exciting. Santa came out a clear winner above all! 

It sure was fun to hear our race announcers use our Merry Okee with an elf voice! 

We had a good time. We learned a lot and this gave us a fun Science Notebooking Activity. 

So, what did we learn? 

We predicted an objects movement and tested our predictions. 

We observed starting and ending positions and described how they changed.

We observed ways objects can move and used appropriate language to describe an objects movement. 

We recorded our observations and used that information to discuss results with each other. 

We set up our own investigation and discussed how we could change the investigation and explored different ways for our next investigation. 

We had so much fun and laughed so hard our sides were hurting. So, who said Science was not fun? It sure wasn't me, just sayin'! 

New Blog!

I have been out on a hunt and looking around. I have found a new blog in town! I am awarding Mrs. Ricca's Kindergarten blog the Liebster Award! Go check her out! 

Thank You!

I have been awarded the Liebster Blog Award by First Grade Shenanigans! The goal of this award is to highlight an up and coming blog with less than 200 followers. I am super excited to get this award for my new blog that is dedicated to my love of teaching young children science.  

Now I am on the hunt for new blogs to highlight. If you have a blog with less than 200 followers please comment below so we can keep this award going. 

Force, Motion and Energy Oh My!

Hello Science Friends, 

So much has been cooking in our Kindergarten Science Lab! We had so much fun today that we had to share this with you. We played Kick the can and made some ice cream today and we learned a lot along the way. 

We started with our basic ice cream ingredients that were well chilled. 

We set up our equipment. 

In goes the milk.

In goes the cream and then the sugar. And our secret mystery ingredient. 

In goes the ice and rock salt in layers. Be sure to tape your lid shut! Be sure and tape both of them! 

Get your 20 favorite Kinder friends, turn on some music and pass the can. We just were not brave enough to kick it! 

Figure out different ways we can keep the can moving! 

We noticed some changes... Our can is getting colder actually very cold to the touch and frost is starting to develop on the can. We also notice when we keep the can moving the frost is not seen and the can is wet. We also notice the mixture inside the can feels different when it moves and the ice feels different too! 

We noticed that it was getting difficult to push the can and get it across our circle. We decided to try the table instead. We noticed that the can rolled better on the surface of the table. Hmmm, could that be some friction? 

We had to take a peak and see if all this shake, rattle and roll was really working after ten minutes. We discovered it really was working but we still had more work to do. 

So, did you believe we could pull this off? We had no doubts we could do it. So what did we learn? 

This was one part of our Investigation of Force, Motion and Energy. Children learned that energy, force and motion are related and part of our everyday life. Children observed and described the ways the can could and could not move such as: 

Straight

Zig Zag

Up

Down 

Back and Forth

Round and Round

Fast 

Slow

We observed starting and ending positions with our can. We noticed that the movement changed as the ice cream changed inside our can. We noticed that different surfaces allowed us to move the can differently. We observed ways our can could move and we used position and location terms to describe our object's movement. We  learned we can Notebook about our investigations that we have explored with our senses. And we have learned that we can communicate just like real scientists. And we have learned that sometimes our investigations lead to more questions and we are HUNGRY for those answers which leads us to more investigations! I hope you join us for more fun as we investigate, discover and explore in Kindergarten. 

Cave of Darkness!

Hello Science Friends,

We previously posted about our Light Scavenger Hunt and since that hunt we have been busy preparing for our next investigation. I needed some inspiration to get this investigation going so I turned to Sid the Science Kid for help. As a class we watched several of the Sid Investigations on Light and Shadows and I asked the children to vote on our next investigation. What we decided to investigate was Sid's Cave of Darkness. Since we knew about light sources, we were interested in this investigation. We viewed the Cave of Darkness investigation several times to determine what materials we needed, we even went back through the video clip to list the materials and count them and we had to discuss and plan for alternate materials. The children were in charge of this investigation process and I was the recorder. 

We determined that our sand and water table would be a good structure to use for the cave base. We decided this because the children did not think we had enough blankets to cover a regular table. 

We took turns adding blankets one by one. 

We worked together on our design. 

We became pretty good about using positional vocabulary to help cover the cave. 

We saved the biggest blanket for last to cover up all of our blankets... smart idea!

We turned off the lights and searched with our flashlight for areas where light would enter into our cave of darkness. We adjusted our cave design and then we took turns one by one going in... The room was almost silent as the first brave person went inside. We wondered if they would be scared. We wondered what they would see. We listened as they told us which areas that light was creeping inside the cave. We relied heavily on each others oral directions and you just can't imagine how precise some of the directions were. I was amazed at how much position and location vocabulary words were used to repair our cave. It took about seven tries before we were able to really create our cave of darkness and then we did it! Each child went inside one by one and experienced total darkness. As each child was inside, another child was outside using a flashlight asking if the child inside could see the light to the left, to the right and so on. I have to admit I was getting a little curious and wanted to go inside too!

This is what I saw... total darkness! I can't believe it worked! We did it! While I was inside, I could hear the children directing me to look for light sources everywhere but none could be seen in the cave of darkness. I started to think it was kind of peaceful in there. I guess I stayed a while because I heard a few children asking me if I was ok in there! Once our experiment was over we had to have some notebooking time to record our observations and experience.

This is exactly what our investigation looked like inside and out. What a vivid observation!

Another great observation! I was not afraid either!

We all agreed that planning our own investigation was fun. We learned a lot about investigation design and how to work together and communicate like a Scientist. We now can say we have experienced total darkness and it wasn't so scary. Total darkness is simply the absence of light!

So now you want to try your own Cave of Darkness? I knew you would so click HERE for the lesson plan. If you want to see how Sid and the kids did it? Just click HERE and go to investigations and then look for the clip Cave of Darkness!
PS. I soooooooo want to be Miss Susie!