A Seasonal Timeline!



Hey Science Friends,

Like most teachers summer gives us a time to reflect on the past year and the opportunity to plan for a new year ahead. It is a good time to take what worked and make it even better or just scrap the bad and start over. One of the things that I liked in my classroom this year was my seasonal timeline. I started off the year with class pictures. It kept us on track with birthdays during the year. But what I didn't like was that some seasons were a little more crowded than others leaving less room to add pictures or information for that specific time of year. I am already thinking of ways to make it work and work better. I have to admit our favorite part of the timeline were the pictures but other important events happen in the year and room needs to be saved for those events. A timeline is a good place to post seasonal science observations like a tree changing throughout the seasons and those events that take place within each season. I think with a little adjustment our timeline just might make the cut and appear again this coming year! 

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!