STEM in Kindergarten? Absolutely! In this post, I share four easy activities that your kinders will thoroughly love.

You will love these fun, creative, and unique 30 Art Projects for Kindergarten including seasonal art, famous artists, and handprint art too!

Finally, self assessment and meaningful reflection for our younger IB PYP learners. Following on from the highly popular write and draw Learner Profile and Thinking Skills resources, this IB PYP write and draw resource will have your students reflecting and assessing their own progress in a fun, engaging and meaningful way as they become adept with the sub skills within the IB PYP Approaches to Learning Skills. Designed for Kindergarten up to Grade 2. •Thinking •Research •Communication •Social •Self Management • Through the concept of REFLECTION and the Learner Profile attribute of BEING reflective, the children are asked to analyse their own application of the sub-skills commonly relating to kindergarten up to grade 2. With editable templates, you can add your own success criteria and even co-create success criteria with the children, adding them to both the 5 Star Rubric format and the Reflect & Draw Score chart. Both formats of rubric will challenge your students to think critically and creatively, encouraging their voice and ownership and ultimately accountability with their own progress of the ATL Skills. The "Read, Draw, Write" style worksheet encourages students to read the words from the simple language within the success criteria, use them to create sentences to describe their drawings and to self-assess using the rubric too. Great to use with: •Focus skills within your units of inquiry •Reflection activities •Evidence of progressive skills development •Student/Peer/Teacher feedback •Self assessment of writing skills •Encouraging student agency •Student led conferences Each page provides space for the children to illustrate their own example and then to write a sentence about how they applied the specific skills. An image related to key words is included to help students generate ideas when writing about their creations. The rubric included on each sheet encourages self-assessment of writing as well! Win-win! An extra lined writing page has also been included at the end of the packet for differentiation, should they wish to write more. Just print this page on the back of any sheet to provide more writing space. If you are looking for more ideas and tools for bringing the PYP into your early years classroom, be sure to follow along with my blog PYPteachingtools.com. And please do browse the early years collection of PYP TEACHING TOOLS in my store. Enjoy! Susan Powers PYPteachingtools.com

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!

Picture Books for the IB PYP Learner Profiles I have been collecting children's books for over 20 years. I have organized them in several different ways during that time- by theme, by author, by holiday. You name it, I have tried it. Now that I am teaching the Primary Years Program in an International Baccalaureate

Finish off your classroom library with these adorable storybook character posters! (DIGITAL DOWNLOAD) All posters are digitally drawn from various popular storybooks! Preview of all images are shown in the pictures above. This listing contains 21 different posters! Poster Size: Each poster is 8.5x11 inches (this includes the black border and white edges). If interested in cutting the white border off, the poster is about 7.5 inches wide by 10 inches long (border to border). Printing Tips: I recommend printing the posters on 65 lbs. white cardstock, which can then be laminated to increase durability. Upon purchase, you will notice that there are 2 versions of the posters. One version is the original posters/colours, while the second version has a filter placed on each poster (slightly less vibrant). You can choose which version best suits your personal style/classroom! This file contains 23 different posters, including characters from the books: - The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt and Oliver Jeffers - The Smart Cookie by Jory John and Pete Oswald - Don't Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus by Mo Willems - Not Your Typical Dragon by Dan Bar-el and Tim Bowers - Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister - The Cool Bean by Jory John and Pete Oswald - Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes - That's What Dinosaurs Do by Jory John and Pete Oswald - The Couch Potato by Jory John and Pete Oswald - If You Give A Mouse A Cookie by Laura Numeroff and Felicia Bond - The Bad Seed by Jory John and Pete Oswald - The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch and Michael Martchenko - Elephant and Piggie Series by Mo Willems - Dragons Love Tacos by Adam Rubin and Daniel Salmieri - The Good Egg by Jory John and Pete Oswald - I Am Human by Susan Verde and Peter H. Reynolds - The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle - The Cat In The Hat by Dr. Seuss - Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems - Charlotte's Web by E.B. White and Garth Williams - *Recent Addition Update: Wonder by R.J. Palacio - *Recent Addition Update: Pete The Cat by Eric Litwin and James Dean **For personal use only** ***I do not own these images*** If you have any questions or character requests, feel free to email me!

Flowers, insects, and sunshine! Just in time for the month of May, and these Transitional Kindergarten May Worksheets! These printables have been a life saver for me! In the midst of distance learning, I have been sending these electronically to my parents to help my TK students continue their learning at home. You can also...

Project/Inquiry Based Learning has been a passion of mine ever since I discovered it about 5 years ago. Since then, I have stepped out of my comfort zone and transformed the way I teach from a typical Thematic Based style through baby steps taken each year and with the help of an amazing on-line community of teachers with the same passion (you all know who you are!). My first baby step was taking themes and science/social studies standards and making them more student lead and project based. I got rid of the two week time limit each theme had in the past and allowed more time for students to dig deeper. I found that students would take my broad theme (oceans) and desire to dig deeper into more specific parts of the theme (sharks, jellyfish, ect.). As time went on, I was able to take the biggest step and totally let go of my themes and allowed the children's interests drive my instruction, incorporating the standards through those interests. I am blessed enough to also teach in a district that does not mandate the curriculum I use. Curriculum programs are purchased to use as tools for our toolbox but not required. Us teachers are trusted and encouraged by our superintendent to write our own curriculum as long as the standards are met. My building principle also has that kind of faith in us as professionals! They know that when it comes to children learning what they need to learn, we are the experts! Project/Inquiry Based Learning is highly encouraged in all grades Pre-K through 12. Some wonder how I plan for this style of teaching and how it flows. Here are some of the tools that I use. Once I notice an interest from the students (usually found out through experiences set up for them to explore during play) , I find out what their knowledge and misconceptions are about the subject. Kind of like a KWL chart! I list all that they know about the subject we will dive into. Then I ask what they wonder. I list all of their questions. NOW I can plan! I take their wonderings and create a web map showing the different directions they want to take the inquiry and possible experiences that will help them find answers to their wonderings. I got this web map from the amazing Joanne Babalis and her amazing blog http://myclassroomtransformation.blogspot.com. On the back I have all of the Literacy and Math Standards listed so that I can highlight the ones we will focus on through the inquiry and project. I add any Science and Social Studies Standards to the bottom of the web map. Here is the link to the web map if you would like it: Web Organizer Here is the link to the Common Core Standards Sheet for Kindergarten Language and Math: Kindergarten CC Standards Once I organize my thoughts, I create my inquiry plan using a template I created based on one I found from a Texas school district. It was so long ago I have no memory of which district but if I find out I will add them to give them credit. Their form was 3 pages long. I tweaked it to fit it all on one page. I use this to show the objectives and vocabulary, plan the investigations and materials I will need, show how they will organize the data about what they have learned, possible projects that could result from the inquiry and how we will present the project to the community. Here is the link to this inquiry planner if you would like to download it: Inquiry/Project Planner The next step is to start the investigation phase. In early childhood I set out experiences for them to explore and document what they notice. We also do whole group and small group investigations through books, videos and hands-on experiences. As we answer questions, we add the answers to our wonder chart to show our new learning. We organize this data in a web map format for all to see. The start of an inquiry wall. Information is added to it as we learn. Once we have investigated we use organizational maps to show what we learn. In kindergarten it usually consists of web maps, circle maps, tree charts (can/have/are maps), and brace maps (to show part to whole). We will chose one or two to organize our data. The next step is the project. We take what we learn and create something to show it! The projects can be individual, small group, or whole group. Some examples of projects in our room have been turning an area of our room into an ocean, forest and sky to show how animals adapt in the winter. The kids signed up to be on the migration team, adaption team or hibernation team. They each became experts on their part during the investigation and worked on their part of the project. A cave, forest, sky and ocean were created to show what animals do in the winter. Animals were created, labeled and added to the habitats. A group interested in map making and migration created this map showing migration patterns of monarchs, geese and grey whales. Another project was our The Sound Exploration Area created for our school. They saw a need (an area to explore sound) investigated different ways of creating sound, organized the data and designed a Sound Exploration Area! An area for everyone in our school to explore sound which is in our science standards. They have also turned the inside of our room into a great hall and medeival kitchen and the outside of our room into a castle wall complete with moat and drawbridge after investigating castles! The outside of our castle. A map created by a group interested in maps and where different castles were found in the world. A big book created by a small group about who lived in castles. A small group project during our castle inquiry. They have created murals and big books to show their learning also. A mural planned and created by Kindergartners. The last step is the presentation to show what they had learned. The kids LOVE this part and I've never had a child refuse to present! They are so confident of what they have learned and proud of what they have done that they cannot wait to share it! I am always so impress with their speaking and listening skills during these presentations! Sometimes small groups go to other classrooms and present what they learned, sometimes we invite parents or other classes to our room to see our presentation, and sometimes we create a video to share with others. They create maps, big books, and, get to show off the projects created at this time! Showing what they have learned through these projects gives the projects an even bigger sense of purpose! They can't wait to show others what they have learned and done! Presenting different weapons used during medieval times. I have never had so much fun teaching in my 22 years as I have he past four years! I could never go back to the way I had done it I the past. The benefits of this way of teaching are not only meeting the standards (the old way did that too) but the 21st Century Skills they are forced to develope when they learn in this type of environment. When inquiring, investigating and creating within thier own interest, they are motivated to collaborate, problem solve, handle frustration, persist if things don't work the first time, and learn from their mistakes. They have to use critical thinking skills and develope research skills. When kids develop these skills, they can learn ANYTHING! My new passion that I am learning to incorporate in my classroom is Playbased Learning! I have been amazed by the learning taking place in this way also....but that's another post! SaveSave

FUN summer math activity to practice addition up to 20 using free printable math puzzles. Solve equations then cut and paste worksheets!

A Kindergarten blog about effective teaching and making learning fun.

Deeper learning reflected in our Kindergarten wonder wall. #prsd8

Find out how to create a morning meeting routine in kindergarten that will set your day up for success! Includes free morning meeting greetings.

This product is an inquiry based activity related to the IB theme: Who we are - Unique me! The worksheet is a class activity that can be done in pairs and helps students to identify how we are all different and unique. The "Unique me" worksheet is a class activity that can be done in pairs.

This product is an inquiry based lesson related to the IB theme: Who we are - Unique me! The content discussed refers to how we are all different and unique. It is a PowerPoint Presentation that presentation covers the inquiry process: Tuning in, Finding out, Sorting out, Going further and Taking Action.

Explore different materials and their properties with this engaging unit. Activities and printables for the Foundation and Prep Year chemistry strand.

As an interest based learning teacher, I usually start out with something most children have some experience and interest in until I get to know them better. Color is something they always enjoy exploring! I set out paint at the easel and asked, what can you wonder and discover about color here? As they explore, I constantly model for them the growth mindset, language and vocabulary often used in an inquiry based classroom: What do you see? What do you think? What do you wonder? What do you notice? What did you discover? Did you learn something new? Did this change your thinking? These are questions I want them to ask themselves as they explore new things this year! I set up experiences for them to explore colors. They quickly on their own started focusing mostly on different shades of colors. Here are some pictures showing the invitations to explore and the children exploring and discovering things about color. They were also noticing shades of colors of objects in our room! When they discovered them, they would share what they noticed with the class. They noticed we could mix colors to make different shades of colors and that adding white made lighter shades and black or darker colors mixed in made darker shades. I wondered out loud if it was possible to create 100 different shades of colors? We looked at a book called Pantone Coors that you see in many of these pictures that showed there were lots of shades! The kids took it as a challenge and a project was born! We wanted to see if we could create 100 different shades! We did one color each day. We did it! Not only did we make 100 different shades, we made 120 different shades of colors! They were so excited to beat their goal and create that many colors! They also discovered that black was black but we could make different whites! I told them that I wanted to display their colors to show people what what they learned. We debated how to display them. Group them by colors separately? Group them by light or dark? Like a rainbow? I thought they would prefer that one but they surprised me. They agreed on a circle with all of the color together. I couldn’t fit the browns and grays/white/black in so those were separate. The kids helped label and write out some of the things we did and noticed for our display to document our learning. Here is the finished display! This was a fun way to get started with how we will learn in our classroom! As they learn more about letters/sounds and writing they will be recording their own observations of what they see, think, wonder and discover! As the year goes on, you will notice them using their writing and reading skills more and more in natural, authentic ways! This is one of our big goals! Now that we have finished, I have started to notice some common interests to start our next inquiry and take all of our learning further! Stay tuned! Here are some other things that have been going on in our classroom! Learning to identify letters and sounds. We start the year learning one letter a day through our Journeys curriculum and how to write the capital letter properly using our Handwriting without tears curriculum. Here are some of the experiences set out for them during this time. The kids have learned how to partner read with letter books contains predictable text. They are learning letters, letter sounds, and the first three reading strategies: 1) Use your pointer finger to touch each word. 2) Look at the picture. It is a clue to figure out harder words. 3) Look at the first letter and say it’s sound when trying to figure out a word you don’t know. They are also learning to help each other and encourage each other as they read together. Here they try to create the letter by putting the lines down in the order they should make them when writing. Here, if they can name the letter and/sound, they are allowed to use it to build a castle. Of course they can ask friends for help if they don’t know it! More ways to practice proper formation of letters and develop fine motor skills to help with writing. Pebble crayons to encourage their pincher grip, texture to feel themselves making the letter on both the the grid and the chalkboard (both provide resistance. A whiteboard does not so does not work as well. We learned about Mat Man to help us with drawing people. We draw his parts and then add details to turn him into somebody. We keep writing at a minimum for now so that we don’t continue the bad writing habits they have developed. We focus on creating stories through pictures and telling oral stories. We read these books to help us. It helped us realize if we don’t know how to draw something, we can draw it “ish!” Dog-ish, violin-ish, etc. it gives them the freedom to try and helps those perfectionists not throw away every drawing they don't feel is perfect. We also read Beautiful Oops and Oomph! These taught us to work through mistakes and to add the destabilization a picture needs to tell a story in itself! These books really helped them learn to tell stories through pictures. Good Dog Carl is a good example of a story told through pictures. A lot of literacy learning has been happening and it’s only just beginning!

Here's how to create a literacy block schedule for Kindergarten in a half-day or full-day program!

This past week we have been discussing what belonging to a community means, what communities we belong to (families, class/school, neighbourhoods, sports teams), and the people and places within these communities. We began by discussing the different places we would find in our community and why they are important. Then students had a chance to …

These IB PYP Portfolio Cover Sheets can be used to divide unit sections within the student IB Portfolio. They are intended to be used to begin each unit with an opportunity for students to learn and reflect on the Central Idea and Lines of Inquiry for each Transdisciplinary Theme. Not only are students taking the time to think about what each Central Idea means to them, but they are also given a chance to consider and record preliminary questions they have about the unit. I have used these in my own student portfolios. They are a great way to begin each unit and are also helpful for students as they lead parents through student-led conferences. They are ideal for students in grades 2-5. Use them with: o Student Portfolios o Introducing new units o Student-led conferences Enjoy! Emily DeLora

All year, ever since the beginning, I noticed that the students enjoyed creating things such as inclined planes, wheel and axels, and levers in the forms of ramps, catapults and creatve vehicles. I told them these were called simple machines and that I had noticed they were very interested in them! When I asked if they would like to dig deeper and inquire about simple machines, they were very excited! We already have a good supply of materials for engineering, but I set out some different materials for them to explore. They were very excited to explore and see what they noticed! I cannot tell you how many times these kids failed, problem solved, failed again, collaborated, failed and persisted as they explored ways to create and use simple machines! They truly learned to look at failure as a positive learning experience in order to help them figure out why something didn't work and how they could change it and try again! Look at the excitement at the end of the video below of the children when one of their friends was finally successful after many design changes! During an investigation of Inclined planes we created a challenge. They had to create an inclined plane that would roll the cylinder right to the end of the ribbon. They observed each other and used what they noticed to adjust the board and see if they could do it. Look at how excited they got when a friend finally did it! They noticed that the cylinder went faster or slower depending on the angle of the inclined plane! This brought up a question. We have been discussing the terms "effort," "force" and "load." They learned that simple machines helped us use less effort. They learned effort was force and there were two kinds of force: push and pull...but no one pushed or pulled the cylinder down the ramp! This brought up the discussion of gravity being a force that pulls! They applied this knowledge and commented often about it as they created and played with lego and geoboard marble mazes. They also explored the force of gravity and inclined planes by creating marble paintings and drip paintings! I love combining art and science! They developed an interest in Rube Goldburg Machines! They noticed when observing videos that sometimes the balls went up ramps and wondered how since they felt gravity wouldn't allow that! They explored this concept and took it as a challenge. They created new ramps to figure it out and found out that the force of push could be stronger than the pulling force of gravity on the ball. They tried creating Rube Goldburg Machines. These machines are a chain of events that do something for you. They really had to problem solve to make these work! The video below shows one one of many that were created. It was supposed to knock over the blocks at the end, but she still had some problem solving to do! The amount of dedication, problem solving, persistence, collaboration, and grit that these kids have shown during this inquiry has amazed me! These kids have these 21st Century Skills and are using them constantly! The kids have picked a simple machine to become an expert in and are hunting for simple machines around our school. Their next steps are to organize their data and then create their simple machine! We are hoping to do an open house or presentation to show our simple machines to other classes and parents, but with Spring Break and conferences coming up I know that will be difficult! We will try our best!

(Click on any photo to be taken to the resource) You are going to LOVE this unit. It’s easy to implement, it’s comprehensive, #representation, and your students are going to walk away with a great foundation of important social studies skills. We lay the foundation in literally every other academic area, social studies shouldn’t be […]

Force and motion have to be one of my favorite units to teach! First, you can teach it at any time of the year. Movement doesn't happen at certain times of the year. It's everywhere all the time! Second, it's fun to teach because it's hands on. And that's what kids love. It keeps them

Hi friends! Today I want to share with you our dinosaur inquiry from the past few months! We originally had some dinosaur wonders on our February wonder chart, so we went back to those questions and I also invited students share more questions they had about dinosaurs. Here is what they came up with initially: Why did the dinosaurs go extinct? How did dinosaurs go extinct? Is it true that the dinosaurs died because it go too cold? Back then, were the dinosaurs real or was it just a story? What do dinosaurs eat? Where did dinosaurs live? Did dinosaurs live in caves? Why do dinosaurs have tails? Why did dinosaurs run? What did dinosaurs sound like? Why did dinosaurs make loud noises? They weren't brainstormed in that order, but I grouped them like that so we could look at questions that were similar consecutively. For our lessons, we first started by reading the book "What are dinosaurs?" by Bobbie Kalman. In this book we learned that dinosaurs were real but lived long ago and that no dinosaurs are alive today. After we learned this information, I had the girl who originally asked the question "Back then, were the dinosaurs real or was it just a story?" come to the teacher table during centre time and record the sentence "Dinosaurs were real but they lived long ago. There are no dinosaurs alive today." It's hard to see but it's the writing at the bottom left corner on the bulletin board! Here are two centres I put out early on in our dinosaur inquiry. First, I bought this egg at Dollarama and posed the question "What do you think will hatch out of the egg?" and had students observe and write their predictions. They loved looking for changes, especially after seeing a few cracks develop! After it hatched (it was a triceratops inside) we talked about how all dinosaurs hatch from eggs. Another centre we set out early on was this dinosaur provocation. This centre lets the students freely explore different dinosaur items and also record their observations and questions about dinosaurs. I bought the dinosaurs from Michaels. You can get the tracing/matching cards you see in the picture for FREE by clicking here on the image below: The next day, we continued to read the book "What are dinosaurs?" by Bobbie Kalman learned that dinosaurs eat plants and meat. We learned the words carnivore and herbivore. After the lesson we prepped for our next lesson by making the titles "What do dinosaurs eat?", "plants" and "meat". Then I made 2 eggs and printed the herbivore and carnivore signs. I also printed the herbivore and carnivores that were in "What are dinosaurs?" and "First Facts: Dinosaurs" by DK Publishing (that I planned to read the next day). The next day, we put the chart pieces up on the whiteboard and read the pages about what dinosaurs eat in "First Facts: Dinosaurs" by DK Publishing. As we read the book, we sorted the dinosaur cards on to the correct egg. We also went back to the "What are dinosaurs?" book and re-read the pages that had information on herbivores and carnivores ands sorted the corresponding dinosaurs on those pages as well on to the egg. Here is the finished chart: (this activity and the map activity below was inspired by @playexplorelearn on Instagram!) The next morning, I set out this invitation to sort dinosaurs based on what they eat. I left out the two books we read to make our chart the previous day as a resource and our completed chart was also on the bulletin board for them to reference! Next, we looked at the question "Why and how did dinosaurs go extinct?" First, we watched the video "Where did the dinosaurs go?" by Pink Fong on YouTube. We watched the video twice and then the students recalled the steps to me about how the dinosaurs went extinct. I wrote each step on a different whiteboard. Then at centre time, students volunteered to record the steps and draw a corresponding picture (if they wanted to) so that we could display the steps on our bulletin board. Next we explored the question "Where did dinosaurs live?" We read pages from "Dino Encyclopedia" (I can't remember the author, sorry!) and "You Can Be a Palentologist!" by Scott D. Sampson to learn that dinosaurs only lived on land (those other creatures that flew or lived in the water were flying reptiles or ocean reptiles that lived at the same time as dinosaurs! Who knew!) but they lived on every continent. I drew up a big map on poster paper and told them that we will be painting it together and then adding dinosaur stickers to show our new learning. First, students were invited to show their new learning about the world map by painting one. If they were able to paint the map correctly (green for land, blue for ocean) then they were invited to come and paint on the large collaborative map. We projected a large world map on the projector so that students could use that as a reference when painting. Here is some of my girls adding to our collaborative map! After we painted the map, we also made labels for the continents, the title and the writing piece to show our new learning. The next day, we glued the continent labels as a class and also added the dinosaur stickers whole group. And here is the completed map and corresponding title/writing: I got the stickers we used for the collaborative map at Michaels. The next day, I also let the students add mini dinosaur stickers to their original maps! I bought the mini stickers at Walmart. I started with a limit of 10 but I realized not everyone made a map so increased the limit to 15. These tiny stickers are great for fine motor development! Here is a sample of a finished map! I had some requests to share the printable for this activity so you can click here or on the image below to download it for free! Next we investigated the question "What did dinosaurs sounds like?" We watched these two videos: and we learned that scientists think dinosaurs did not roar like they do in movies like Jurassic Park. Instead they think they made a hissing noise. Then the girl who originally asked the question came to the teacher table at centre time and wrote her new learning to display on our bulletin board. It's hard to see but it's the top right writing piece in the picture below: Another centre I put out was this story making centre! Students were invited to make a dinosaur story with play dough and loose parts and use ChatterPix to record it. They LOVED this activity! On the last day, I wrote some of the remaining questions on chart paper (Did dinosaurs live in caves? Why do dinosaurs have tails? Why do dinosaurs run?) and we used google and our own inferencing to come up with the answers. I don't have a picture of this... sorry! To consolidate our learning, we also made these non-fiction dinosaur books! This was a great guided group for my higher writers. First we made our cover page and talked about titles, authors and illustrators. Then we learned about table of contents and how it helps us find information in a non-fiction book. We wrote our learning on each page, added a title and went back and added each new topic to our table of contents. It took about a week to complete but it was worth the time! Next time I think I'll start with less pages in the book though, especially for our first book! Here are some other books in case you are interested in looking! They used our bulletin boards as a reference when thinking of facts to include in their books which made our bulletin board more interactive than usual which I loved! If you are looking for these non-fiction book making printables, you can find them in my "Inquiry Writing Templates for Kindergarten" pack on TPT. You can click here or on the image below to see what else is included! Here is the finished bulletin board again: We had some amazing questions come up during our dinosaur inquiry (see below). We recorded them but the kids were losing steam with this inquiry and our caterpillars arrived so we switched gears without exploring these questions. I just wanted to share that because it's ok to not explore every question! Don't beat yourself up if you can't find the time! We can only do what we have time for :) That's it for our dinosaur inquiry! I hope this post gave you some ideas if your students have similar wonderings or are interested in dinosaurs too! - Yukari

At the beginning of the year, while I was waiting to see what interests started popping up for Inquiries, we spent time getting to know each other and building our community! Of course, we read books to get us thinking. Here is one the kids loved that talked about how our facial features are different. I passed out mirrors and the kids all looked closely at themselves. We discussed how our faces had different shapes. Our eyes had a color, but also a shape! Same with our noses! We all made a blackline sketch of our faces to show how we saw ourselves in the mirror. The next day, we had a discussion about what practice means. They did a beautiful job for a first try, but if they did it again, do they think they would do better, worse, or the same? They all felt they would do better! We discussed that practice helps us get better! So we tried again and they felt that their second try was even better than the first. The next day we read The Color of Us. It is one of my favorites! The names used to describe the different colors of people are beautiful! During our exploration time, the kids took turns matching water color paint to their skin tone and painting the skin on their second self portrait. During this process, they learned how to paint with watercolor by rubbing the brush against the side to get rid of the drips and taking care of our water colors by washing their brush after each color. After it dried, they painted their eyes, mouth and hair. I always love these self portraits! They dictated to us what their biggest goal was for them to be able to do be the end of Kindergarten and we wrote their goal on their self portrait. Here are some of their goals: "I want to learn how to grow big muscles." "I want to learn how to write my name correctly." Here is one of my favorites: Here is the display of their work: Next, they want to create a friendship painting using their handprints inspired by one my kids made last year that is dislayed in the hallway! I can't wait to see how they make it their own!

Engage your class in an exciting hands-on experience learning the five senses!

The first week of Kindergarten is soon upon us! Ok, ok, it's a month away. But, I still need to be ready to handle the first day and the fir...