A Look At Landforms!

 

Hey Science Friends,

We have been super busy as we get closer and closer to Spring Break it seems we are moving at a fast pace... We have almost finished our unit on rocks but it is hard to stop because we keep getting more and more interesting rocks to explore. In Social Studies things are heating up as we begin to learn about landforms. And although landforms are covered under our Social Studies objectives, there is a natural connection to Science within these objectives. And with any topic we are always on the hunt for books to go along with what we are talking about. And sometimes that is such a challenge. Although I am still working on book resources, I wanted to share what I have found so far. I usually pair non fiction and fiction books when possible but sometimes age appropriate non fiction books are hard to find. So when that becomes an issue we use Pebble Go to fill in the gap.

 

 

 



We are going to learn more about four different landforms including the desert, mountains, prairie and forest. Some of our objectives covered are to identify the physical characteristics of places such as landforms, bodies of water, natural resources, and weather. As you can see Pebble Go will play a vital role in helping us cover these objectives.

 

 

By far this is my favorite new book find. I promise, this is worth every penny. Forest Bright Forest Night is like getting two books in one! You can learn about the forest in the day and the forest at night by flipping the book over. I just love it. Also, each page has a hidden number and animals to match each number. Additionally the pictures show what happens from day to night in the forest and what each animal does according to the time of day.

 

 

I can't wait for this one to arrive. I bought it because every single book I have from Dawn Publications is wonderful... This book is similar to Over in the Meadow, so I was sold on it with that description. Also, there is some great counting fun here too. Within this book there are some great opportunities for some ELPS strategies through gestures and movements for each animal.

 

 

Oh my! Moving into our discussion of mountain landforms! I have searched high and low for books on this landform that was age appropriate. Lucky me, I have a librarian that is like a fairy godmother. Into the Outdoors is our favorite pick for mountains BUT we are still on the search for more books on this landform. What I love most about this are the pictures and the fact that this book gives you a great opportunity to review positional vocabulary! I swear, your gonna love it too!

 

 

As we move our discussions to the desert we are looking forward to reading this book. This one is also a similar format to Over in the Meadow with rhyming text and counting to ten. What is not to love here? So much integration and so little time. We are going to pair Way Out In The Desert with Welcome to the Sea of Sand.

 

 

And finally, we move on to look at prairie landforms. A Day on the Prairie is our top pick because it is written by KIDS! What a great book written by third grade students at KILDEER COUNTRYSIDE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL!

 

 

 

If you are looking for activities for Texas landforms you can find that here!

 

 

Have fun exploring and investigating!



Rocks ROCK!

 

Hey Science Friends,

We have been having tons of fun investigating the natural world. I think the highlight this week was a visit from Mr. V from Real School Gardens. We always look forward to his visits with us. We were excited this time around because we knew we were going to talk...ROCKS! And we have been waiting several months to kick off this unit and we were lucky enough to kick it off with Mr. V.

 



 

So here we go getting ready for our scientists meeting. We always start with a meeting and we love it when we are outside. With our Science Notebooks in hand and pencils sharpened we are ready to go!

 

 

 

 

We sure knew what we were in for when we saw this. Yep, we are going to sort rocks by properties and I just bet we can add a few more categories to that. We are kind of good at that if I say so myself. I think we are super sorters by now.

 

 

We start our lesson with three simple rocks. Just playground rocks. At first glance nothing really that special...until you take a closer look! Scientists look and look again and discuss what they find. And when we discuss our findings and take a closer look, we begin to see the differences in even playground rocks.

 

 

We begin sorting and I think even Mr. V was impressed at how fast we can sort. We decided to sort big and small rocks.

 

 

I wonder how many rocks we sorted?

 

 

Great idea... we needed an organized method for counting our rocks. I guess our counting strategy worked and it helped make counting easier and accurate.

 

 

And we found more ways to sort our playground rocks.

 

 

And we start to realize that someone is not adding to our sort... It's ok, we know everybody needs a rock and sometimes, just sometimes, it is hard to let go of that special rock if even for a minute...

 

 

You sure didn't see me letting go of my tiger stripe rock!  

 

 

We add lots to our Science Notebooks for our rock sort. And then we were off for more investigations.

 

 

 

 

We found some pretty big, rough rocks and we had to get a good feel of those. And then we realize it is time for our field investigations to end. It is amazing how time passes by so quickly when you are in the moment and we all sure were. We learned that rocks can be sorted by their properties and we learned that even playground rocks have different properties when you take a closer look. And some of us learned that it is hard to let go of a favorite rock. I am like that too! I even bet Mr. V has a favorite rock in his pocket!

 

 

So Mr. V we wanted to post this video for you. We thank you for teaching us to be better scientists and how to explore the natural world and for teaching us to see the beauty in our world in our garden. Best wishes to you as you continue to inspire science teachers and help develop young scientists...especially the small ones.

 

 



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!!! 

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...

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!