Earth Day Hats!

Are you looking for an activity to do with children that will provide some hands-on fun while you are having tons of Earth Day fun? I have the perfect project for you. Earth Day recycled hats are so much fun and a perfect way to show how we can use recycled materials to male something useful.

Overlay three or four sheets of newspaper on the table.

Place the paper on the head of your favorite Earth Day model.

Use masking tape to tape around the head.

Staple the pieces together.

Cut around the edges and fluff!

Admire your creation! Model and admire, admire and model.

Let the creativity begin!

The best part is that everyone can be dressed and ready for your Earth Day festivities and hats just make you feel so happy. And when Earth Day is over you have a super hat for your newly inspired Green Recycling Team!

Grab your Earth Day Poem and share the love!

And here is the link for free Earth Day Hat Decorations!

Visit me inside the classroom for a fabulous Earth Day video that you can incorporate into your festivities!

Look What Came To School!

We have been so busy working on non fiction writing, rock investigations and now soil. Just when you think the day will be just a normal day in walks a child with a box... I couldn't believe it! Ethan brought a turtle. The cutest turtle ever.

As you can imagine this brought so much excitement to our class today. Since we were already working on non fiction writing I wanted to see if we could use this experience to help us learn how to write non fiction. We had so many questions for Ethan about his turtle. We were all curious about how to care for a turtle because we were secretly wishing that Ethan would somehow just leave the turtle at school... We were able to get on the internet and jump right in to some great information about turtles. When we went to Writer's Workshop I decided to talk about using Thinking Maps as a plan for non fiction writing. I was pretty excited that we were all able to contribute to the Thinking Map and we remembered so much that we actually ran out of room. I was able to use our Thinking Map to show the class how to use this as a tool for non fiction writing and complete a writing piece based on our turtle experience. All in all, this really sparked some interest in non fiction writing and the class was eager to give it a try.

 This is what I had planned on using instead of the turtle to spark some non fiction writing. Instead we used our earthworms to really focus on setting up a worm habitat for our Science Center. I will admit this is my first experience with earthworms in the classroom and I have to tell you it was worth ALL of the three dollars that I spent to get them. We all were TOTALLY SCARED to lift the lid off the worm container but we did it anyway. I swear the room was silent as I pried the lid off. We all were expecting wiggly, squiggly worms just ready to squirm out but they were tucked right into the soil. The kids were fascinated by the worms and so was I. We all helped to set up the worm habitat and we used worm books to figure out how to do it. We will take pictures and show you soon. As you can imagine 19 kinder kids, 1 turtle, 1 new class fish, 25 worms and 1 teacher... the pictures were not so great!

Setting Up Rock Investigations!

Setting up rock investigations has been super easy and quick. The children were able to take this on and work independently in no time at all.

Each Science Team worked well together and explored the properties of rocks. We were able to determine that our rock collection was missing some rocks for some of our categories. We now were on a rock hunt. We were able to find most of the rocks outside on the playground. Our rock collection and our playground rocks have given us a nice collection to explore and investigate. We sent home the rock parent letter to help us collect the rest of the rocks we need for our investigations.

We even noticed that rocks have shapes and sometimes more than one shape can be seen on the surface. All these up close investigations have led to some great notebooking and wonderful descriptive writing. We will keep you posted on what we discover.

Don't Miss Out!

I am taking a break from all things related to dirt, worms and landforms. I wanted to share with you a great giveaway from The Posh Box. This giveaway is fantastic because if you win you will get a Ready2Go blog design for free. I have entered and entered and I have my eye on one of those blogs. Wouldn't it be fun to have a cooking or craft blog? With all those fabulous ideas out there it could be fun to blog about all things fun. For giveaway details click HERE.

Earth Day!

Source: google.com via Little Miss Kindergarten on Pinterest

I was thinking about Earth Day and remembered that I had written this with my kinder class last year. Earth Day was one of our favorite events that Kinder year. Just getting out this poem kind of got me a little misty eyed just thinking about my Earth loving kids. When I think of my class this year, I realized I have a FIERCE playground pick up crew, so I had to get this out for them. From my classroom to yours, I share it with you just click on the image above.  

Also, I remembered a free sorting activity that we did last year to help us learn about recycling. You can grab that here.

Take 2!

Here is the download again but with adjusted margins for better printing!

Free Is Fun!

Hello again!

Just had to make sure you got this freebie. This is such a simple tool but it has really helped my kids plan for non fiction writing. I hope your class can use it too! Click on the image for the download!

I Love Rocks!

Source: countingcoconuts.blogspot.com via Tammie on Pinterest

 

As I was searching for some more inspiration for rocks and hoping to find some fun and interesting ways to integrate rocks and natural resources I came across this. I love this idea and tons of learning could come out of this.

Source: Uploaded by user via Little Miss Kindergarten on Pinterest

And this could be another way of integrating rocks into other subjects! And playgound rocks are free. You could always have a hunt for smooth rocks and get your collection up and running for these alpha rocks pretty darn quick. If you look in the craft section of Dollar Tree you can find bags of good river rocks for a dollar!
Have fun investigating!  

FREEBIE CORRECTION!

Please pick up you updated and adjusted FREEBIE by clicking the image above. I printed the Parent Letter at school and it did not print correctly so I adjusted it a bit. I have also added a small box at the bottom. Enjoy and have fun investigating!

Kindergarten ROCKS!

I am so excited to write this post! The Rock Investigation is finished and posted! If you are interested click on the image above to get your copy. I hope you and your class have fun investigating rocks!

Rock Preview!

Hey Science Friends,

I thought I would post this to get you started thinking about ROCKS. If you do not have a rock collection and you want to teach rocks, this might be a fun way to start. This is a fun Parent and Child activity that extends your field investigations to the homes of your children. Who wouldn't love homework like this? Since I have a rock collection, I am using this to help collect specific rocks for some of the investigations we will be doing in class. I know what you are thinking... what if I have NO ROCKS AT ALL? You can still investigate rocks with simple playground rocks that the children find at school. You would be surprised if you look real close they are not all the same.

Rock Unit Coming Soon!

Hello Science Friends,

I just wanted to let you know that I am working on the final touches to my Rock Investigation Unit. I have had several requests and emails for this and I had to go back to this file from last year and make some changes. My class last year really taught me to love rocks and I had the opportunity to try out several new things with them last year and I wanted to include them. If you have searched the world over like I have for an age appropriate, hands-on unit on rocks that is more than simply reading a book and writing about rocks, then you might want to consider this unit. Right now there are over 30 pages full of standards based hands-on activities with guided independent investigation mats. The investigation mats have been my top requested item and they are cornerstone of this unit. I am happy to be able to share them with you as we develop young scientist together!

Spring Into Savings Sale!

It's a Spring Into Savings Sale at my TpT store and Teachers Notebook.

Teachers Taking Care Of Teachers!

I am linking up and joining forces with fellow bloggers and teachers to lend a hand. I am hoping you will join me.

Click on the image above to find out how you can help too! Teachers Taking Care Of Teachers, what can be better than that?

Free Science Technology!

I just found this site and had to share it here first. I have been playing around on Cookie.com and have found some great Science videos, games and activities through this site and they really would be of interest to your budding scientist. The best part is that this site is free and educationally fun!