Search results matching tags 'freebie' and 'science'

Exploring Weather with Science Experiments in Preschool

Anonymous — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 09:30:00 GMT

Hello again and Happy Spring from Ayn at little illuminations!

We have been learning about weather in our class lately. Even though the calendar says Spring is here, it has still been unseasonably chilly in our area. We've talked a lot about the weather and how certain weather conditions happen. Our discussions have led to several science experiments in class.

We used shaving cream to simulate clouds and food coloring for water. When the clouds get full, the rain falls from the clouds.

We also used some recycled packing peanuts to explore this concept. The children cupped their hands while others filled their hands with the peanuts. When too many peanuts were put in, they fell down like rain.

Another way we explored rain was by putting a dish of ice over a vase filled with hot water. As the ice melted, condensation ran down the insides of the vase demonstrating a rain effect.

We explored wind by placing several items in front a fan to see which items would get blown by the wind (fan). It was interesting to hear the students' predictions and reasons why they thought certain items would blow away.

We charted the weather over a week long period. We've talked about how scientists have to collect data and record it over a period of time, so this was a good way to put that into practice. Here's a FREE printable of our weather chart!

In our art center, weather has been a popular interest. The children have been making a lot of pictures with rainbows and clouds.

We talked about the properties of wind and how that relates to flying a kite. Later, one of the kids made a little kite using items from our scrap box. Later, he took it outside and tried to fly it. For several days after that, the kids were making kites like crazy! (In fact, they are still making one or two daily!)

Pretty soon, kite flying was the highlight of our outdoor time!

Some of the great books we've been reading as we've explored weather can be found in bookstores or online. Here are a few of our favorites:

Hope Spring is happening in your area! We hear that it will soon feel like Spring here in Augusta, Georgia. Be sure to check out the Master's Golf tournament this week to see some of our lovely local Spring foliage. The weather may be confused about when Spring began, but our azaleas won't be fooled!

Stop by and visit me anytime at littleilluminations.blogspot.com or visit the little illuminations fanpage on facebook! And be sure to check out PreK+K Sharing EEE!

Butterflies for the Littles!

Anonymous — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 16:13:00 GMT

What's more fun to do in the spring than butterflies? Nothing of course! It's so engaging and so full of opportunities for reading and writing that it really makes for a favorite unit amongst teachers and students!

If you have never done butterflies before than this is the post for you because I am going to share my experiences with our butterfly garden this year and at the very end there is a really fun giveaway!

Let's start by them arriving. If you use Insect Lore they will arrive in a white envelop and be wrapped in bubble wrap. We checked the mail for DAYS and when they finally came we were so excited! They looked dead when they arrived, but they were actually just dormant (which they go in and out of apparently.)

They come in a cup. Within the cup is everything they need and so there is no need to touch or open the cup. On the bottom is the food and on the lid is a piece of white paper. This white paper is where they will attach to when they become chrysalises. It's very nice that it's on paper because it makes transferring them to your garden super easy!

That's pretty much it. So we wait for 7-10 days. With us it took the full 10 this year! A caterpillar's job is to eat. He will eat, and eat, and eat just like the book says (except it eats caterpillar food.) Here is a picture of about 6 days. You can see just from the picture above they are getting fatter and fatter!

Once they are super fat they will make their way to the top of the cup. This is where they will become chrysalises. They will hang here for about 7-10 days again. This one was about 8 days for us this year. At this point you will want to take them off the lid of the cup and transfer them to the butterfly garden. You just take that white piece of paper and attach it to the lid of the garden. I like to use velcro with the sticky backs because I am afraid that tape won't hold the weight but Insect Lore suggests tape.

One might think watching chrysalises is boring but it can actually be very exciting. One of their defense mechanisms is to shake. Here is a little video I took of our chrysalises!

So 7-10 days later your butterflies hatch! It's very exciting! It can be a little messy though, don't be alarmed if there is blood that appears on your net as they open their wings. (You can see it on some of the floral print.) To care for your butterflies you can put in water and I like to put a piece of fruit or flowers. I like to put a plate at the bottom or a lit to put the water in. Something shallow for them be able to reach.

That's pretty much it! Literally anyone can do it because there is not a whole lot of touching things involved. (Last year I ordered the frog kit... read that you had to give them live crickets after the purchase. Needless to say I was happy they came dead (but a little sad for them and my own kinder who was looking forward to it.)

I made this Butterfly Lifecycle Interactive Learning Journal to go along with it. It takes the kids through the process with activities and then has a journal at the end to record what exactly is happening day by day. Click here to check it out.

I also made a fun freebie to go along with it for you. So download the preview for your Parts of a Butterfly activity!

And now for the Giveaway! I am going to giveaway one Insect Lore Butterfly Garden so you can do this with your little learners!

Please head on over to enter to win your very own Butterfly Garden! Click here!

Timing a Storm Freebie

Anonymous — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 01:41:00 GMT

Friends~We are going to head into the world of Patricia Polocco next week and I can't wait. She is such and amazing writing and her books are going to be great examples of both literature and story telling. I just completed my Thundercake book study where my students will be introduced to memoirs. We will be writing memoirs in Writer's Workshop too!

If you have not checked out Patricia's website, you are missing out. It makes it so easy to begin an author study on her and her books. Click below to make a quick visit!

You can check out my unit by clicking below!

One of the activies we will be doing in class to connect our ELA to our Weather Science unit is to time a storm. We are going to learn to time storms just like in the book Thundercake.

You will need a lamp and a thunder sound byte.

Grab a copy of my Timing a Storm experiment by clicking below!

I would love to hear what you think!

It's Matter Time!

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 19:29:00 GMT

Friends~We just started our Matter unit in class today and I was so amazed at how well my students did understanding the States of Matter. We started out with our States of Matter book from Foss Science Kits. I was so proud of my kiddos because as soon as they got the books they were hunting for text features. If you are interested in checking out the Foss Kits just click the image below!

After our pre reading we then read the first few pages about what Matter is and we talked about the vocabulary words. We also discussed how you can find a definition within the text.

I then split my kiddos into 3 groups. Solids, Liquids, and Gases.

We have been really working on speaking and listening skills in class so I knew this was a perfect opportunity to see if are hard work had paid off.

The groups were given the task of creating individual posters for their state of Matter. Watch and see them getting started!

Here are a few of their posters. They did an amazing job creating and organizing their information. They even sited where they got their information from.

Take note of the graphic organizers and diagrams!

After working in groups, the students then headed back to their seats. I placed 2 small Post Its at their desks. We began a gallery walk in the classroom. That is when we walk around and read each other's work. We often leave feedback for each other on Post Its. I asked each student to visit 2 different posters. If they were in the solid group they needed to visit the liquid & gas posters and so on.

Take a quick peek into our tour!

Next week we will jump into our Matter Experiments. I love when we get down and dirty with Science! So many fun experiments to show Matter properties!

I love using this Matter Takes up Space experiment with the class. They always think it is really cool how the water rises in the cup. Give the image a click to download a FREE copy of my response sheet.

Stay tuned for more Matter Learning!

You can also check out my Matter packet on Teachers Pay Teachers. It is chalked full of hands on Matter FUN!

Animals in Winter FREEBIE

Anonymous — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 01:10:00 GMT

This is going to be a quick post. I just wanted to share what we were working on in class. I wanted to do a little mini unit with my firsties on animals in winter. I created a little projectable reader last night and shared it with my FB followers.

I also made it in a black and white version so they would have one to color and take home.

After reading the story today, I thought that I could make this into a little reading assessment as well. Tomorrow, we will reread our story, and complete one of the activities below. These could be used to differentiate your instruction as well. The sort page with the words doesn't include all the animals that were in the story, but my students love pulling up pictures on the projector and talking about them. This will bring a great discussion on the animals that weren't in the story.

This is my first book I've created like this. Usually my stories are to the form of Brown Bear, Brown Bear. I hope you enjoy this, and if so....I do LOVE comments ;)

(You can click on any of the pictures to grab you a copy of Animals in Winter. )

Have a good night y'all. Happy (almost) Friday! :)

Printables Galore for Educators

Anonymous — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 02:28:00 GMT

Are you looking for some ways to splash FUN into your school day? Education.com is the answer! They have thousands of printables for every grade level and subject area.

Warning: This is a teacher's dream site so make sure you have lots of ink on hand and your printer is ready to go! You may get lost in the hours of downloading and printing like we did!

You can choose to purchase top quality workbooks like these below

or you can print FREE individual worksheets,

games,

crafts,

board games,

invitations,

and we could go on and on but you'll have to hop on over and check out this incredible site for yourself.

Make sure to see the awesome feature that allows you to download multiple worksheets at once. This feature totally rocks!

You can also create your very own workbooks, too! {Click Here} for more information on this great feature.

Enjoy!

Friday Art Feature ... And A FREEBIE!

Anonymous — Fri, 04 May 2012 23:17:00 GMT

Spring is in the air ... and we've been going buggy in the classroom ... literally! My students have been studying the classification system and learning how to classify living things in their latest science unit. I wanted a fun assignment to end our unit, and I knew integrating an art activity would be the key.

With 17 boys in my class, you can guess what their favourite part of this science unit was - studying bugs. So, I gave them an assignment where they could choose any arthropod, and complete research to answer the questions on the assignment. When they had completed their assignments, we made realistic 3D clay models of the arthropods they had chosen. Today we painted our arthropods. They turned out so well! We paired our new buggy friends alongside the completed assignments to make a fabulous display. Come on over to my blog to see more of our completed projects and grab a copy of my arthropod assignment for FREE!!!

Happy Friday!

Jen

Getting Kinders Excited About Writing

Anonymous — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 23:31:00 GMT

Nothing gets me more excited about teaching than seeing my students' growth as the year goes on EXCEPT that moment when my students also recognize their growth and say things like "I love this, I want to write more!"
This actually happened in my classroom (on late Friday afternoon nonetheless!). It was shortly after my little friend had ~~thrown~~ dropped his paper to the floor and declared that he would not be writing because he doesn't like to. I don't know if it was my ~~threat~~ warning that he could write it during play time or if he realized that he actually COULD do it, but, before I knew it, I had him running up to me after EVERY sentence and excitedly scooting back to his seat to write more (this happened 7 times, but who's counting?). My little friend whom I write about started school only knowing 4 letters and lacking any semblance of self confidence. This 7 sentence descriptive writing that he happily completed made me SOOOO happy, but his joy is what made me even more excited. I have this feeling that writing for him will be all downhill from this one experience.
What got him to this level of eagerness and excitement and confidence you ask? It was the topic he was given, I do believe. This child is an ARTIST at its finest. He cares and really thinks about his drawings and his projects and the project "Invent an Insect" that we had completed in the morning was no exception. Once my little friend got over his anxiety, he got excited to tell me all about the insect that he had created which happened to be an "Exploding Volcano Bug" who "spits lava and is always hot".
What child wouldn't enjoy writing about something that they easily invented, drew and colored?
Allowing this child this experience brought out his creative side and gave him the opportunity to realize that he CAN write independently. What kinds of experiences do you give your own students that will allow them to explode as writers?

Come on over to Mrs. Miner's Monkey Business to get the FREE materials you need to do this fun, exciting writing project "Invent an Insect" with your own students, which can also be used as an informal assessment at the end of your insect unit.

Oceans of Fun

Anonymous — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Hi! I'm Kerri from Ms.Kerri and Her Krazy Kindergarten. I'm so excited to guest blogging over here. This is my first time to be a guest blogger. I've been racking my brain since Jeannie asked for some guest bloggers about what to blog about. I have some ideas of things I want to blog about but I'm afraid they might stir some things up and you don't want to do that at someone else's house. Then I thought about blogging about a new game that I'm working on for my class that uses a plastic bowling set from Wal mart. Then I thought about blogging about the new ipod touches I have for the classroom. But I finally decided to do a post on some ocean activities that we've working on.

We started by reading these two books. One was fiction and the other was non fiction.We discussed what it meant for a book to be fiction and non fiction and found interesting words. This is how I do my vocabulary instruction. Inspired by a workshop by Tim Rasinski. We harvest words from the text. The words they chose were seaweed, shark, kelp, crab, ocean. I put these on my interesting words wall. Then we practice spelling them and using them in our writing throughout the unit. They've since added foam, tides, and currents to list after a poem we read. After we read the books, I split the class into two groups. One group had paper that said the ocean is and the other had paper that said, the ocean has. They brainstormed and then worked on writing and drawing on these charts.

We read some other books about the ocean and animals that lived in the ocean. We made a list of these animals and they picked one to draw and label a picture of. We then talked about what facts are and they had to make a web of their animal and add facts to it. The last part is turn the web into writing and make the sea animal to go with it. We haven't finished this process quite yet. But you can check out my blog later for pictures of the final product.

The next part of our ocean unit was the Mystery Box. I bought this from Abby at The Inspired Apple. If you haven't checked this unit out you should. I've used to introduce several of our science units and the kids love it. I had put shells in the box and other things you find at the ocean. My clues were:
1. I live near the ocean.
2. I am many colors.
3. I am many shapes and sizes.
4. I am a home for animals.
One of my students guessed the ocean, which was a pretty good guess. After we examined the shells a little bit, I gave all them a shell and page to work on. The page has a box for each sense other than taste to draw and write about. Then a place at the bottom to write a sentence. This is where I messed up and now you get to learn from my mistakes. I went over the directions but didn't model enough. So the day they worked on this was disastrous. The next day I took a shell and modeled what I wanted them to do. They turned out a little better. Thinking about it now, I think I should have done this together.

Here are some examples of their work. My higher students got this with no problem. I probably could have let them go with it after the modeling and then worked through it with the other students.

Next week, one of the centers the kids will go to is a science center. I've been wanting to start this forever. So better late than never. I'm setting up all the shells and other sea life items on a table. They can explore the items with magnifying glasses and then record their observations on a sheet like we've already done in class. I hope I've given you some ideas for things you can do with an ocean unit or another unit of study in science. I think this method could be applied to any unit of study. I've got a freebie to share with you. The clipart on this sheet is from scrappin doodles.

Science Observation Sheet Thursday and Friday of this week we're going to be talking about the rain forest as part of Earth week. We're going to compare oceans and rain forests and write about our favorite. So be sure to hop over to my blog on Friday and check out the fun that we had.
If you like these ideas and this freebie, I would love for you to come check me out at my blog.

Thanks Jeannie for letting me stop by and share a bit!

Hands-On Magnet FREEBIE!

Anonymous — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 22:03:00 GMT

We're covering magnets this week. It's our last unit before we start reviewing for the CRCT...which is April 23-27. We've already prepped our desks (in rows rather than our normal clusters) so they'll be used to the different room arrangement. I have also started taking stuff off the walls (or the other option is to cover it all up). Each morning they come in and try to figure out what's missing. It's quite fun!

Anywho...sorry for the tangent. :) Here are a couple of pics of how I used the magnet freebies.

First, I gave them bar magnets and let them "explore." They discussed the "funny feeling" or magnetic field between the two magnets when they were attracted to each other. Then we discussed the pattern (opposites attract) and copied down our observations.

For the second activity, I gave each group a cup filled with the objects listed in blue above (I left this part blank on the freebie copy so you could fill it in with your own objects). They discovered if the objects were attracted to the magnet or if they repelled. We discussed our answers as a whole group after each small group had finished.

Click below to snag the activites for yourself!