Living and Nonliving!

 

Hey Science Friends,

We were all so excited to have a visit from Mr. V from Real School Gardens.

We are always excited to get out and investigate, discover and explore. So we went on a nature hunt and looked for living and nonliving things.

 

 

 

 

 

After we had our nature hunt we were able to go inside and discuss what we discovered.

 

 

We created a T chart to sort our objects.

 

 

We sorted our objects into categories of Nonliving and Living. And we had some rich discussions about what was considered Living and Nonliving and even objects that were once living..

 

 

We counted our objects and then we began notebooking about our investigation.

 

 

We discussed how we would represent our data and we decided that grouping objects to represent a larger number helped us a lot.

 

 

 And we even applied some previously learned strategies as we were trying to represent our data accurately!  

 

 

Thank you Mr. V and Real School Gardens! It was a wonderful day to get out and investigate, discover and explore!

 



It's A Sale!



Happy Holidays Friends!

I love, love, love this time of year when I can spend some extra time with family and friends and enjoy a much needed break from normal everyday life. It is also fun to think ahead and plan for what is just around the corner. In fact, I love planning and I am making lists of things to buy and get ready for this holiday season. If you are like me and you are thinking ahead you might want to check out the sale at Teachers Notebook. For the next few days my store items are 25% off and the best part is that Teachers Notebook is giving you an extra 10% off too! It is such a good deal it is hard to pass up!

Just click on the image above and start shopping!

Thanksgiving Science Snack!

 

Happy Thanksgiving Science Friends,

As we begin to talk about living and non living things and learn that living things have basic needs we just could not resist somehow connecting this to our discussions about Thanksgiving. I saw an idea about this last year and decided to modify it a little to meet the nutritional guidelines for where I teach. As we have learned about the story of the first Thanksgiving one of the parts that seems to generate a lot of discussion and interest is the part where the Pilgrims have difficulty planting and growing things on the new land. And my class this year seemed to focus on how the Indians were problem solvers and taught the Pilgrims how to successfully plant corn. The addition of the fish when planting corn or as my class called the corn, "the golden seeds" has sparked a lot of rich discussion.

 

 

 

To make our Thanksgiving Snack we used Sugar Free pudding cups for the soil, Corn Pop cereal for the "golden seeds" or rather the corn and S'more Goldfish flavored crackers for the fish. We discussed Living Things and Basic Needs before we had our snack and as we made the snack we retold that part of the Thanksgiving story. We planted the seeds and buried the fish before we ate it!

 

 

 

And as you can see some of us were super excited to participate!

  



Magnets On The Playground!

 

Hello Science Friends,

Well you can't blame us. We had a little extra time the other day and we remembered that we had not completed one of our Magnet Investigations so out the door we ran with Magnet Investigation Tools in hand to investigate the playground. Since we actually have finished our unit the children ran quickly to something they knew would be magnetic.

 

 

I was able to hear a ton of scientific discussions going on as they were running around discovering new things magnetic. I heard lots of academic vocabulary and we had a lot of fun with this investigation. It was the perfect investigation on a day when we needed to get out a little of that extra energy.

 

 



 

Since we have had so much hands on investigations with magnets I have to say I was super proud of our class discussions and notebooking at the end of this unit. We are all kind of sad that we have completed everything in the unit. We decided that we would add our magnet box to our investigation boxes as a choice activity because we just can't seem to get our hands off that stuff!

 



Magnet Mania!



 

 

Hey Science Friends,

We have been busy and have been finishing up fun with Force and Motion. We have discovered a lot of things with magnets over the last couple of weeks. We have had some kind of fun with our magnet box and we are turning out to be some keen investigators. But just as our unit winds down it seems the exciting part comes last... Now we get to use the materials totally independently and set up our own investigations. And we are looking forward to some investigations at home with our new investigation tools.

 

 

Throughout our investigations we have discovered a few books that we used in the unit.

 

 

This was a great book to use for predictions about what is magnetic. The text is simple just pictures and the words yes and no. It is a perfect addition to a Kinder Science Center.

 

 

This book has some great information but needs a little modification for Kinder.

 

And we liked this one which required just a little modification.

 

 

Hands-on Science is just so much fun!

 

 

 

 

 

 

As you can imagine the magnet box is quite popular and who could blame anyone for wanting to explore what is inside? And we have gotten pretty good at predictions!

 

 

 

 

 

 



Force and Motion!

 

Hello Science Friends,

It has been a busy week of investigating fun. We have been able to get outside and explore and investigate while the weather is still pleasant and the sun is still shining. We have learned a lot about force and motion in the past few weeks. It is always fun when you can add toys and playground equipment as necessary tools for Science investigations.

 

 

On of my favorite things about our Force and Motion Unit has been this predictable chart. Any amount of time it took to make it has paid off a million times over. We have been able to accomplish a lot with just one chart.



 

Reading/Beginning Reading Skills/Print Awareness

We have been able to use this chart for:

 Recognizing that spoken words can be represented by print for communication.

Demonstrating one-to-one correspondence between a spoken word and a printed word in text.

Recognizing that sentences are comprised of words separated by spaces and to demonstrate the awareness of word boundaries.

Identify that a sentence is made up of a group of words.

Science

This has been used as a visual aid to learn the terms needed for force and motion investigations. 



And to help us describe the ways that objects can move such as in a straight line, zigzag, up and down, back and forth, round and round, and fast and slow.

 

 

I always try to incorporate books into any unit study in Science and sometimes that can be challenging. The two books above could be used for K-2 Science with just a little modification for Kindergarten.

 

 

 

 

As you can imagine balls were some of our favorite objects to investigate!

 

 

For more Force and Motion Fun! This unit includes:

Table of Contents:

13 Different Hands-On Independent  Field and Indoor Investigations with Recording Pages/2 Conceptual Big Books/3 Conceptual Emergent Readers and so much more!  Options for building your own unique journals/notebooks to fit your classroom needs!

2 Versions of My Force and Motion Notebook/Journal backline printables

Magnets Vocabulary Poster colored printable

Magnet Safety Rules Poster colored printable

2 Versions of My Magnet Investigation Notebook/Journal backline printables

Safety Magnet Investigation Recording Page backline printable

10 Is It Magnetic? Investigation Recording Pages backline printables

Directions and pictures of Magnet Investigation Tools

My Magnet Investigation At Home backline printable

What Is Magnetic On The Playground Investigation Recording Page backline printable

Magnetic/Non Magnetic Sorting Headers backline printable

Magnetic/Non Magnetic Sorting Pictures backline printable

Magnetic/Non Magnetic Sorting Headers colored printable

Is It Magnetic Emergent Reader backline printable

Magnet Book Suggestions

Objects Can Move Vocabulary Poster colored printable

Objects Can Move Vocabulary Chant colored printable

Objects On The Move Teacher Big Book colored printable

Pictures and Directions for Objects On The Move Predictable Chart

2 Versions of Emergent Reader Objects Can Move backline printable

Force and Motion Investigation Recording Page backline printable

2 Versions of 5 Objects On The Playground Investigation Recording Pages backline printables

Objects On The Go Compare Fast/Slow Investigation backline printable

Where Is Hooty? Colored Props printable

Where Is Hooty? Teacher Big Book colored printable