This project and center came about when we were studying plants, flowers, and sequencing. You can see that our sunflowers had begun sprouting in their egg cartons. The children were really excited about that and it gave us an opportunity to talk about the parts of a plant. I had previously left the sprouts out so that my co-teachers could help me keep and eye out and water them when I was not there. By co-teachers, I mean we share a room. There are three of us in the room and three separate classes. Two of our classes run with the same themes and book titles while the third is a camp class of sorts and is always full of fun happenings. Our Friday teacher set this up on our science table thinking we would like to do this with our kiddos as well and she was totally right. Since it was also our week of A Rainbow of My Own, I swapped out the trays or rainbow colors and added our polka tray in the center to hold the parts. I brought in flowers from my garden at home and culled from the leftover plants we had from the previous week and set them out to for the kiddos to explore. We talked about the parts of the plants and went through the various names as each child selected something from the polka dot tray. On our tray, was an assortment of the renegade bean plants that sprout when we "accidentally" leave black beans in the sand box after sensory play. One of the kiddos totally made the connection and insisted on going outside to harvest the remaining plants. Of course this led to others wanting to plant more so out came the tub of black beans as the children carefully planted them in our sandbox.
Sunscreen painting! Creative STEAM activity teaches the science of sunscreen and is a fun art project. Perfect for preschool, kindergarten, and all kids.
Find out how to do this hands on acid and base experiment to help your children enjoy learning. See how they can learn in the outdoors and through play!
Crunchy, juicy, and sweet, most preschoolers love apples, so a preschool apple theme is sure to satisfy little learners!
These kindergarten anchor charts will give you the tools you need to teach math, reading, friendship skills, and much more!
Measuring weight is a fun and engaging topic for little learners to explore! These hands-on activities are perfect for the classroom!
Explore different materials and their properties with this engaging unit. Activities and printables for the Foundation and Prep Year chemistry strand.
Colour matching is a simple fun activity for children of all ages. Here are several easy to set up colour matching activities and games you can play both outside and indoors. One of our favourite g…
I don't buy things like color, number or letter charts from teacher stores because the kids make them so much more beautiful! I don't have classes make all of the charts every year, but when the children do create the tools, they understand the reason behind them so much more. They take ownership of them and love to use them. When they make these tools, they are more noticeable and don't fade into the background like store bought tools that were there when they walked in on their first day. Inquiry Based Teaching has taught me how much math, science and art are interrelated! As I have learned with the kids, I have noticed that you see math in science. Math is all over nature!! You can use science to make art! We also see math in art in patterns and shapes. I have even heard that there is science in Van Gogh's "Starry Night!" It really is amazing how connected they all are! The kids had been mixing colors in our science area and loving the new colors and shades they were creating! Here is the science invitation I had set up for them to explore. After they explored with mixing, I set up an invitation to explore different shades of the same color. This book is amazing for showing colors have different shades! The kids liked to use it as a reference. Since the kids were enjoying mixing the colors in our science area so much, I thought of an idea for a number chart! It would also be a work of art! I found a huge canvas at Michaels for 70% off! It would be perfect! I gathered the materials and told the kids that we were in need of a new number chart to help us with making and identifying numbers, number words and counting. I taped the canvas into 20 sections. The kids were very excited to start creating, especially after I told them they would be able to mix paint colors to create their own unique color for our chart! I called them over during our Purposeful Play time to explore color mixing and create their color! They painted one square with their color. After mixing their paint, they named their colors. Some were very creative like jelly and deep ocean blue! When the colors dried, we wrote the numbers on their color with a pencil and them they painted the number with black paint. They counted up to their square and we talked about what kind of lines they had to use to make their number and the correct way to print their number. I wrote the name of the color they created with a sharpie. I realized we would not be able to fit the number words or ten frames for showing how many in the squares so we made those separately. They practiced counting one to one correspondence and matching numbers to objects as we did this. Then I called kids over to help spell the number words. Many did not realize that you could spell a number! Here is our finished number chart! Our math area is now complete with the tools we need, and if I do say so myself, I could not buy anything better or more beautiful at the teacher store! It is a work of art! Kid's work is always so beautiful! Here is our math area. I have math books about counting under the table for them to explore for now. Under the table is where I put books relating to the focus on top of the table. They can relax and explore math at the same time under there! The focus in the math area this week is numbers. This provocation was created to provoke their thinking about different ways they can make numbers. They pick a number and use the materials available to make it or show it in different ways. They then share it with their partners. We are also taking pictures and letting them share what they did on the promethium board. Skills/standards practiced here: Number i.d, counting, subitizing, matching numbers to objects, and addition! One of our math trays has this game on it called "Race to 20." They roll the dice and put that many beads on their number card and tell their partner what number they are up to. Whoever gets to 20 first wins! Skills/standards practiced: Counting, one to one correspondence, the concept of adding more, and number i.d. Here is another game they can play in the math area. They roll the dice and put that many wool balls in to their section. Whoever fills their section first or has the most at the end is the winner! Skills/standards practiced: Counting, one to one correspondence, the concept of adding more, and being able to tell more/less by looking at objects. Another math tray that I do not have pictured are number cards to guide them to make thes number with pattern blocks or with the geo-boards and rubber bands. Skills covered here are number i.d. and how to write the numbers as they record the numbers they created. This post gives you an idea of how math works in our room. We have a math area as shown here, but math is definitely not limited to that area! Math happens all over our room! It happens in our Engineering and Maker's Space as they build magnificent things! It happens in our Building area as they build with our wooden unit blocks and loose parts! It happens in our art area all the time! Math is definitely not limited to one area! The kids are now exploring leaves as they are falling from the trees right now on our playground! Stay tuned to see where that takes us!
Los imanes magnetico o no magnetico is a great way to have your students learn this objective in a fun and engaging way. You get 2 cut and paste sorting activities in black ink. You also get labels and pictures in color for a whole group sorting activity or file folder game.
We often use loose material compositions in our classroom as a way for children to tell us what they know. We set out various mater...
I just came across this amazing resource from Science Sparks: a free ebook on science for the early years, full of fun experiments you can do with a classroom of kids or with your own child. There&…
Había una vez una semilla: Habia UNA Vez UNA Semilla (OCIO Y CONOCIMIENTOS - Milagros de la Naturaleza) : Anderson, Judith, Gordon, Mike, Del Amo De la Iglesia, Fuencisla: Amazon.es: Libros
Learn what is STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art & math) and why STEAM is important for our kids & quick steps to get started with STEAM!
Since the middle of February while were creating our dragon project, I started to notice something. The kids were taking the logs out of our building area and creating "bands" with them as drum sets. Kids were making shaker's at the maker's space, two friends brought three sizes of clay to me and wanted to show the class how when they thumped them each size made a different sound. Another friend took a plastic bottle wrapper off the bottle and pulled on both ends sharply and showing us the snapping sound it made. I was hoping to avoid it this year, but somehow, every year, kids start exploring sound! So....guess what our next large scale inquiry is: Sound! I set out some areas for them to explore first. Then we will let them wonder. I set out glasses for them to compose their own music and perform for the class. I had planned on it being an exploration of pitch, but they noticed something else instead. At first the compositions were very random, then one friend colored an AB pattern and played it. It sparked a discussion on how there could be patterns in sound and also defined "rhythm" as their patterns became more complex. After they were done with this area, I set out these materials to see what they noticed about sound. We discovered that the more water that was in the bowls, the lower the pitch and the less water the higher the pitch! For our Engineers, I put out materials for them to create instruments and show what you have to do to get it it to produce sound. They created instruments that produced sound through shaking, striking, rubbing and strumming. For our artists, I set out pictures of instruments for them to look closer and then draw its outline with a sharpie and creatively paint it with watercolors. We also looked at Picasso's Blue Guitar painting, then hung it at our easel to inspire artists to create their own. As they explored, two main things came up in our wonders which became our driving questions. How is sound made? When does sound become music? We learned that sound is caused by vibrations and that the sound waves travel through the air to our ears. But something had to happen to make the vibrations start? The kids through exploring came to the conclusion that sound is made by striking, shaking, blowing, rubbing, strumming and plucking. We made instruments to model the different ways to make sound. To show that sound can be made by shaking, we made maracas. To explore the concept of pitch, we provided different fillings for maracas: Sand (not pictured), rice and two different sizes of beans, then we compared them. We also used these as guiros to show show that sound can be made by rubbing. They just ran a craft stick over the ridges of the bottle. To show that sound can be made by blowing, we made harmonicas! The first time we tried them they didn't work. I realized that we needed thicker rubber bands to create the sound. They could tell the rubber bands were vibrating as they produced sound. They were very loud! The kids loved them! To show that sound can be made by strumming or plucking, we made cup guitars! They have a great rich sound when you put them by your ear and pluck them as the sound is amplified by the cup! We used three different sized rubber bands to create different pitches. The kids could really see the vibrations with these. They could also feel the vibrations on their hands. To show that sound can be made by banging, we made drums! To organize our data, we created a web map showing the different ways to make sound and the instruments that are used for each one. To explore when sound becomes music, I showed them videos of a group called STOMP. They use random objects to create different rhythms with different pitches. Look them up on YouTube! They are amazing and the kids loved watching them. They were inspired and created their own STOMP inspired groups using random objects we could find in our room and our closet! You can see some videos of these on my Instagram account at darlamyersclass. Through STOMP we realized that when sound has a pattern it gives it rhythm, and when sound has different pitches added to the rhythm it creates music! After all of our exploring and investigating, we wrote informational books about sound to show what they learned. The kids really loved exploring the science of sound! Another thing going on in our room is a Mo Willems author study. These little friends have been in our reading area all year long. The kids didn't think they were really anything special until... we read one of his Elephant and Piggy books. The kids have really enjoyed listening to and reading his Elephant and Piggy books. They have been very inspired by him in Writer's Workshop and many Elephant and Piggy stories have been written by them. They decided that they wanted to turn our dramatic play area into an Elephant and Piggy Workshop where they could read and write stories about them! Now these stuffed animals are extra special to them! Here is our finished area! They made a sign: This area has been very popular! A lot of reading and writing skills are being practiced here! I am sure as we read his pigeon and Knuffle Bunny books, they will be inspired to write stories about them in this area also! We brought out our collaborative canvas again! It just didn't seem finished yet! I poured some paint on it and the kids used large craft sticks to scrape the paint across the canvas. They loved this process! I think next we will start adding some texture and three dimensional aspects to it! Here is a clue as to what we are going to discover next! It fits in this box!
This post is part 1 in my inquiry series. To learn more about inquiry click through to see my many other posts about inquiry. If you are new to my blog,
These superhero science activities and experiments, inspired by favorite comic book characters will encourage young, heroic scientists!
We love rainbow science, and this STEAM / STEM light activity using a blank CD and paper is a really fun one! Not only will kids create rainbow reflections with the CD, but they’ll use paper to alter the patterns of the light. Follow our Science for Kids and STEM for Kids Pinterest boards! …
This worksheets is designed to get children thinking about how animals camouflage themselves in the wild. It is a perfect topic starter or extension activity that your class are sure to love! I know mine did! The children must colour in the bugs to camouflage them against the background. If you ...
This magic paper towel art will blow your child's mind. As if by magic you can make pictures or colours appear by placing a paper towel in water. How is this possible you ask, is it magic or is it science? Whatever it is this surprise drawing activity is definitely fun!
Explore Alain Bachellier's 12135 photos on Flickr!
Learn about the inner planets for kids with activity ideas about Mercury, Mars, Venus, and Earth plus solar system for kids printables!
These fun and engaging hands on measurement activities will help teachers plan and implement lessons on length, capacity and mass. Includes a FREEBIE!
The best way for kids to truly understand science is to make sure that they have some fun projects to do. These are 7 science kit ideas for kids to do at school that you can put together yourself.