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! 

Investigate, Explore, Discover!

Hey Science Friends,

We are going on a Light Scavenger Hunt with Sid the Science Kid so come join the fun by clicking here!
We had a lot of fun going on our Light Scavenger Hunt today.

Can you see us? We are searching for light sources in our room. If you would like to try this you can get the lesson plan right HERE!

 After our hunt we had some notebooking time and recorded where we found some light sources.
We investigated and found light sources in our classroom:
From our windows
Under our doors
On the computer
On the radio
In our crab habitat
On our shoes
On the emergency exit sign
On speakers
On the phone
On our aquarium

Where can you find light sources?

Oh Miss Susie, I Love Charts Too!

As we were looking for some science inspiration we found this old favorite! Also, technology week starts on December 5th on PBS kids so be sure to check it out!