Saturday, January 19, 2013

What's Up With The Weather?


Hey Science Friends,
You know for most of the year we have had the same old weather and we tracked it and graphed it day by sunny day. It seemed as if the weather would never change and if it did it was sure to be on the weekend! Early last week we had over three days of rain! And considering we could not go outside, we had plenty of time for some special weather reports and some fun weather reporting. We had fun talking about rain, wearing rain clothes, reading about rain and reporting about rain. 
And we found some new favorite rain books along the way! 






And wouldn't you know after our huge big deal about rain...it snowed!!! 

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Take Two!


Hey Science Friends,
Just letting you know that if you purchased my Rock Unit from TeacherspayTeachers please go and grab your update! If you purchased this unit prior to this post you should have received the notification for the updated file. I will be busy printing mine and getting ready for some fun, engaging hands-on science fun with rocks. And soon you will find out why...



Saturday, January 5, 2013

Winter Is The Warmest Season!


Hey Science Friends,
I have tried and tried not to blog about books again but I just can't help it. You know when you find a good book that you fall in love with you just want to share. Winter Is The Warmest Season is one of those books. I think what drew me in was the fact that this book talked about the season of winter. And the title naturally has you thinking why is winter the warmest season? 


When the book arrived I was excited to read it. I like how the book talks about winter being the warmest season as it compares winter to summer. This would be a perfect book to read before some discussions on seasons and it would be a great intro before a seasonal thinking map. And just perfect for some notebooking too! It also talks about the clothing and food in winter and addresses plants and animals in winter too. This book is perfect for seasonal sorting as well. My class has loved any and every sorting activity this year and I love that because it has been a challenge in the past to reach the goal of describing their own sort without prompting. In class we use Sorts for all Seasons as an independent sorting activity. I print these cards on cardstock and laminate them and then glue magnets on the back of the cards. The children sort the seasonal objects on a big magnetic board. After they have had a lot of practice sorting and I am ready to work on the goal of describing their own sort I run to these...


These are from Lakeshore and worth every penny for the Science classroom. These are super durable and after a few sessions of modeling how to create a sort, the kids are off and running with this one. I think the best part is that there are lots and lots of ways to sort these animals and they are realistic, photographic pictures of each animal. And the more you sort these animals the more sorts the kids come up with!