Aug22

Finding materials for science activities

So many times I wish I had everything I need to do an activity with my five classes of two to five-year-olds—all in a kit. Managing materials in a way that doesn’t distract from the concept being explored, but keeps it foremost in the children’s attention, can be tricky. Because young children won’t wait for the teacher to find the bag of cotton balls or some other piece of equipment, I try to have everything in a box or on the table. Planning over a period of years, gathering materials for one kit at a time, is less daunting than feeling I have to have it all this year. If the preschools had a bigger science budget I would be interested in buying pre-made kits. Any suggestions from those of you who have used kits?

Note in the photo, that baby food containers are handy to re-use as small animal observation boxes.
Peggy
Published: Aug-22-08 | 3 Comments | 597 Links to this post

Aug19

Using Science Notebooks With Young Students

Science Notebooks can be useful tools, even with young students who are just learning to read and write. See how kindergarten teacher Kathryn Kaatz incorporated science writing and drawing as she took her students on "A Walk in the 'Tall, Tall Grass'" after being inspired by Denise Fleming’s book entitled, In the Tall, Tall Grass (1991).

In his book, Using Science Notebooks in Elementary Classrooms, author Michael P. Klentschy offers gives useful suggestions for sentence starters and writing prompts that can be used with young children.

What are your best ideas for incorporating science writing and drawing with your young observers?

Published: Aug-19-08 | 2 Comments | 734 Links to this post

Aug14

Weekly Wondering: What Are You Doing to Get Ready for the New School Year?

August is here, and that can only mean one thing: The new school year is right around the corner!
 
Teacher Vision offers some tips for starting off the school year, such as organizing portfolios for students and designing bulletin boards. There is also a list of science tips, including:
  • Have a Science Table in the classroom, and keep changing the theme: rocks; seashells; insects; birds; magnets; inventions; and so on.
  • Put a prism on a countertop on a sunny day to catch the children's attention and to launch a unit on color, sunlight, or refraction.

This is an especially nice suggestion:

  • Memorization is not the key at this level. Exploration and discovery are important. Explain that real scientists work in this way, too.
Check out the list and add your suggestions here. How are you preparing your classroom? What is the first science you want to teach your students when the year begins?
 
 
Published: Aug-14-08 | 2 Comments | 547 Links to this post

Aug12

Send Us Your Teacher's Picks

Each Early Years column features resources selected by real teachers--and we want yours!
We're seeking Teacher's Picks on the following themes:
  • Investigation Skills
  • Literacy Development
  • Physical Science
  • Communication in Science
  • Plants
  • Classification
  • Social Studies
  • Technology
  • Habitats
  • Asking Questions
  • Math and Science Explorations
  • Observation Skills
  • Weather
  • The Senses
  • Outdoor Learning

If your resource list is published in the journal, you'll receive a free book from a selection of books from NSTA Press (http://science.nsta.org/enewsletter/Early-Years/eyb.htm).

Send your your top five resources (books, websites, multimedia, and so on) on a topic to earlyyearsblog@nsta.org.

Published: Aug-12-08 | 0 Comments | 567 Links to this post

Aug07

Summer Teacher's Picks

The Summer Early Years column An Invertebrate Garden featured Teacher's Picks from science resource teacher Fred Arnold of Spencerport, New York, who helps teachers and students raise Painted Lady butterflies, mealworms, super mealworms, and milkweed bugs in their classrooms. He finds insects can awaken an appreciation and understanding of the intricacy of our world.

 

Books

For Teachers

Life on a Little-Known Planet. Howard Ensign Evans. 1993. The Lyons Press.

This book highlights the wonderfully strange habits of insects and is richly described by an entomologist and naturalist.

 

The Handbook of Nature Study. Anna Botsford Comstock. 1986. Comstock.

Found a preying mantis, a walking stick, or firefly and want to know what it eats, where it lives, how it defends itself? This is a great book for you to demonstrate to your students what it means to “look it up.” It also has terrific ideas for investigations.

 

For Students

Bugs! Bugs! Bugs! Bob Barner. 1999. Chronicle Books.

Even the youngest bug enthusiast will find these colorful collage rendered illustrations and the rhyming text engaging. Eight common “bugs” are featured. The final pages list details and real-life-sized renderings for students fascinated by the facts.

 

From Caterpillar to Butterfly. Deborah Heiligman. 1996. HarperTrophy.

Butterflies may be the most easily appreciated of all insects. This book follows the growth of a Painted Lady butterfly raised in a classroom, from caterpillar to adult flying out the window. A brief final section introduces other common butterfly species and lists butterfly centers that can be visited.

 

Internet

BioKids

Kids’ Inquiry of Diverse Species. University of Michigan, School of Education and Museum of Zoology.

Teachers can use the Field Guides: Invertebrate ID Guide to narrow the field and identify the collected invertebrates, and students can view photos in the Critter Catalog to find a match and learn a little about the animal.

 

What’s That Bug?

Found a cool bug but no one seems to know what it is? This website was set up to identify insects from submitted photographs. Chances are good that you can find your interesting insect discovery in their enormous library

of identified insects, just by browsing the site. Not there? You can send in a picture which, in time, may be identified.

 

Have other favorite invertebrate resources? Share them below.

Published: Aug-07-08 | 0 Comments | 401 Links to this post

Aug05

Predator finds caterpillars indoors

Last August I had four monarch butterfly larvae chewing up milkweed leaves on my kitchen windowsill as fast as I could provide them. The caterpillars were borrowed from the elementary school habitat as eggs to show to children in a workshop in a few weeks. Well, they hatched before the workshop so I showed the caterpillars instead. (So small upon hatching that I didn’t notice for a few days!) There were five to begin with, but one morning I came down and saw a spider with one of the caterpillars (half inch long at that point) in its grip. Needless to say, that spider had to move outside and the rest of the caterpillars moved into a large pretzel container. Here I thought I was protecting these babies by keeping them indoors! The remaining four went home to the school habitat after the workshop.
 
 
Journey North, a website from Annenberg Media that engages students in a global study of wildlife migration and seasonal change, has a Monarch butterfly migration page for information and to report sightings, http://www.learner.org/jnorth/monarch/
Published: Aug-05-08 | 1 Comment | 9 Links to this post

Aug04

Who Needs a Slug?

Who needs a slug? was the question this week at a program I gave at the public library. The children, ages 6-10, carefully picked through habitat-like containers I had compiled the day before from my yard. For some reason slugs were scarce this week, but there were plenty of roly-polies (isopods), millipedes, earthworms, and I even managed to catch a few centipedes—for viewing only as these animals can give a painful bite. With magnifiers in hand, the children made both life-size and diagram-size drawings in a science notebook made from a folded sheet of paper. There were a few die-hards who had to be reluctantly parted from their invertebrate companions. 

A wonderful book about the lives of insects for those of you who enjoy a conversational read and want to know “what are they up to?” is Broadsides from the Other Orders: A Book of Bugs by Sue Hubbell (Mariner Books, 1998). 

I also enjoyed reading an amusing and eye-opening article about entomophagy (insects as food) in Science News (June 7th, 2008; Vol.173 #18, http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/32443/title/Insects_%28the_original_white_meat%29). Apparently insects are full of wonderful protein and minerals! One of the experts, Patrick B. Durst, a senior forestry officer with the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s regional office in Bangkok, suggested that removing the heads makes insects more appealing and entomophagy advocate David Gracer says they are no more disgusting than shrimp. How many times do you have to offer a new food to children before they will try it?

Peggy

Published: Aug-04-08 | 2 Comments | 312 Links to this post

Aug01

An Invertebrate Garden and...

It feels like summer will be over before we know it! Many of you--those who actually had a summer off that is--are busy preparing your classrooms and projects for the coming school year. In the summer Early Years column, An Invertebrate Garden, Peggy Ashbrook described how to attract invertebrates to an outdoor area for later study. Planting flowers to attract butterflies is something we'd all love to do, but be honest, how many of you will be collecting some of our less lovely invertebrates for study?
Even if you don't have an outdoor space suitable for gardening or invertebrate attraction, there are still many preparations to be made and long-term projects to dream up. Tell us your plans for your classroom below.
Published: Aug-01-08 | 5 Comments | 307 Links to this post