Aug29

Planting this fall for spring time blooms

I’m planning a fall gardening activity now, before school starts, and the first step is to mark my calendar to buy spring flowering bulbs before the end of September. Seasonal changes vary across the many climates in the United States. If you get temperatures below 40*F for extended periods of time, you can plant these bulbs too. If not, go to the Tag Cloud menu on the left and click on "Growing Plants" to see the September 15, 2008 post with a link to growing other types of bulbs.

 

Cover of September 2009 Science and ChildrenRead the activity about planting

spring-flowering bulbs in the

 Early Years column in the September

issue of Science and Children, the

National Science Teachers Association

elementary school journal.

 

 

 

Teacher and child planting bulbsIf all your students are years beyond the exploring-with-their-mouth stage then they can plant my favorite flower, daffodils or jonquils. If there is any chance that a student might bite into a bulb, buy Camassia spp. (also called Camas, Quamash, and Wild Hyacinth) bulbs which are a safe plant to eat (although I never have). Check out plant toxicity online using the lists for unsafe and safe plants at the California Poison Control System at http://www.calpoison.org/hcp/KNOW%20YOUR%20PLANTS-plant%20list%20for%20CPCS%2009B.pdf before making garden choices. And most importantly, know your students and be watchful.

 

 

 

 

Sing a song before and after planting bulbs, and all winter long while wondering if the bulbs really will sprout.

Act out the following song while you sing it, to the tune of the traditional song “Jack in the Box”.

Spring flowering bulb, (children curl face down on floor, hiding face)

So safe in the ground,

Way down inside, your little dirt mound, (hands curve over head)

Spring flowering bulb so quiet and still,

Won’t you sprout up? (heads up and jump up, stretch arms up high)

Of course I will!

 

Do you have a favorite book about planting flowering bulbs? Both non-fiction and fiction that ties into the science topic are useful. Here are some that have been successful in my classes:

BA Flower Grows by Ken Robbins. 1990. Dial Books.

The book follows the growth of an amaryllis bulb through photos.

BFrom Bulb to Daffodil by Ellen Weiss. 2007. Children's Press (CT).

This excellent book includes plant structure details through photography and introduces some vocabulary so it can be useful for English language learners as well as early readers. I wish the book did not use the word “sleeping” instead of “leaf senescence” to describe the leaf and flower die-back because young children can learn, and like to use, big words that are more precise. “Senescence.” I clap and say it to help myself remember: sen-nes-ence, (sə nes′-əns).

BThe Life Cycle of a Flower by Molly Aloian and Bobbie Kalman. 2004. Crabtree Publishing Company.

Photographs reveal the details of flower structures and plant parts and the text describes seed production and other ways plants reproduce.

BInvestigate Plants by Sue Barraclough. 2009. Heinemann Library.

With a question and answer format, this book asks readers to answer before turning the page.

BPlanting a Rainbow by Lois Elhert. 1988. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

This classic shows bulbs in the ground before sprouting and when blooming.

 

What seasons do you experience? Do your students remember the way it rained and rained last spring or the big snow that happened as long as 1/4 their lifetime ago? Here are some books for discussing the cycle of seasons and the passage of time with young children:

B Boxes for Katje by Candace Fleming Candace Fleming and Stacey Dressen-McQueen. 2003. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

This story about tough times in post World War II Holland is based on the experiences of the author’s mother who sent boxes to a family in Holland.

B Spring: An Alphabet Acrostic by Steven Schnur, illustrated by Leslie Evans. 1999. Clarion Books.

Spring from A to Z, each page an acrostic poem beginning with the letters of the alphabet. Your class may want to write their own acrostic poem about a word related to the season. The series includes Winter, Summer, and Autumn.

B What Comes in Spring by Barbara Horton, illustrated by Ed Young. 1992. Knopf.

In this story a mother relates the family’s milestones to the seasons.

B When This Box is Full by Patricia Lillie, illustrated by Donald Crews. 1993. Greenwillow Books.

Children love to guess what the girl will put in the box next to represent the month (one object per month). It reminds me of The Important Book by Margaret Wise Brown in that it says what is important to a child about a time of year. For me it would be ice, a heart, seeds, a kite, sunscreen, swimming pool, a novel, tomatoes, school supplies, birthday cake, pumpkins, and a candle. What would you and your class choose?

B A Year in the City by Kathy Henderson, illustrated by Paul Howard. 1996. McGraw-Hill.

Some seasonal changes are specific to urban environments: snow grey with car exhaust, Chinese New Year parades, and city park garden blooms.

 

Share the seasonal books you find useful by posting a comment below. Hope you get to plant with your class!

Peggy

Published: Aug-29-09 | 2 Comments | 0 Links to this post

Aug10

Showing the science: using children’s work to document your program

Digital photography changed the way I do science with my students. I reflect more on what has happened and what is being left out as I look over the photos, in moments after school, at home on the computer. I have this luxury as a parent of older children who are themselves busy on the computer, and because I do some of my work at home.

Not every program has time or resources to use digital photography to document the science learning going on in their classes, but the children’s own work also reveals the learning taking place. Anytime children record their thinking with drawings, such as drawing an object they think will sink and an object they think will float (before trying to find out or drawing what happened after), they are documenting their science process skills. When recording observations, children make a record they can refer back to. In one classroom children drew the caterpillars as they grew, comparing them to a unit cube (which didn’t grow!). Over the week the growth was noticeable because they had their earliest drawings for comparison.

From NSTA The Early Years Blog
(Click on the photograph to go to the photograph folder and see more examples of students’ documentation.)

Have a few clipboards with paper and marker attached for children to carry to where the science is happening—in the block area children are discovering the need for a wide base, in the water table children are noticing the shape of drops, in the housekeeping area children are talking about how their family cooks, and in the book nook children are remembering a butterfly they saw outside that was different from the one in the book. Ask them, “Can you show me with a drawing? “Would you like me to write down your words?”

Peggy

Published: Aug-10-09 | 0 Comments | 0 Links to this post

Aug07

Citizen science: collaborative projects for teachers and their class

I was excited to see a Monarch butterfly land on the Butterfly Bush in the yard (I hesitate to call it a garden).

From NSTA The Early Years Blog

 

Milk weed plant with seed pods but no caterpillarsDoes that mean that the Milkweed plant may yet become a home to Monarch caterpillars? I haven’t seen any eggs but there is still time. Maybe another insect has already staked a claim to the Milkweed, making it unattractive to butterflies. Monarch butterfly migration is the subject of a citizen science project called Monarch Watch, which encourages the creation of “Monarch Waystations”, plantings of caterpillar food (milkweeds) and nectar sources for the adult butterflies. This is a project your class could initiate in the spring after studying the butterfly life cycle.

 

Read more about butterflies and how they are the same and different from moths in What’s the Difference Between a Butterfly and a Moth? by Robin Koontz with informative illustrations by Brandelin-Dacey (Picture Window Books, 2010).  Both are in the group Lepidoptera and your children will love to become Lepidopterists, butterfly and moth scientists. Butterfly information is also available online from California to Florida.  See the Educators' Guide: Butterfly Rainforest at the Florida Museum of Natural History for answers to questions such as “How do Lepidoptera see, taste and hear?”

 

Citizen science projects are one way to connect your class with habitats other than your local one, and to broaden their knowledge of the world while helping them understand that sometimes science is a collection of data collected over time by many individuals. Here are some activity ideas that may inspire you to participate with your class, and join with others in a network to provide data that can be used by other classes and scientists.

 

In the Square of Life project, students plot square meters in their school yards and record all the living and non-living things they find in the square. They compare the information with what other classes have found by looking at the information posted on the website. View student reports to see how your class can learn by participating in the project which was developed by Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education (CIESE) and Bank Street College of Education .

 

In Bucket Buddies, another CIESE project,  students collect samples from ponds to answer the question: Are the organisms found in pond water the same all over the world?  Then they compare their data with that from other classes and look for patterns.

 

One of the many species of fireflies, or lightening bugsParticipating in Firefly Watch means observing and recording the presence or absence of fireflies in your area. Read about "How These Beetles Create Light" and what scientists know in David Farenthold’s article in the Washington Post.

 

On one recent morning with the unseasonable summer temperature of 64 F, I saw a bumble bee resting on a purple cone flower, perhaps waiting for the sun to warm it up. I was tempted to pet it! If you are in Illinois and your students are interested in taking photos of bees, learn about Beespotters, another project where citizen scientists lend a hand.   One beespotter’s photo showed a rusty-patched bumble bee, Bombus affinis, a bee that was thought to be locally extinct!

 

Learning about the lives of insects can expand our students' world.

Peggy

Published: Aug-07-09 | 0 Comments | 0 Links to this post

Aug01

Transitioning to kindergarten: hearing from children who have been there.

Support on the first day of schoolSome elementary schools on a “year-round” or “modified calendar” are about to begin a new school year on Monday, and many others begin in September. Children from my “fours” classes are among the new kindergarten students and I feel so protective of them even though I believe they are ready for the the work, the larger school building, and sometimes a larger class size. After his first week in elementary school my son told us, “They have so many rules there.” New rules in the new school with a larger class size and a larger student body—he soon acclimated to that school’s culture but it was  a process.

Learning and teaching are easier when children feel comfortable. Read  what children say as they tell what new children need to know about starting school in the International Journal of Transitions in Childhood website links to full text papers from the European Early Childhood Education Research Association (EECERA) Annual Conferences.

 

I remember my first day as a parent at a preschool, wondering how all the other parents seemingly knew what to do—where to put the cubby bag and tuition check, and where to find extra paints, the mop, and the key to restock the paper towels. There was institutional knowledge that was unwritten. Once we become part of a community we may no longer see the need for posting such information. As teachers we can take the lead to increase the comfort level of new students and new families by sharing the unwritten “rules” and culture of our classrooms.

Here are my suggestions for families participating in science activities at one co-op preschool:

           ·          Participate in the activities as an explorer. This will encourage your child to do so.

           ·          Make observations after giving the children a chance to do so (but adults do not have to share all the knowledge they have).

           ·          Ask open-ended questions that can have multiple answers, such as, “What do you see happening?”

           ·          Don’t answer most questions—that’s the children’s job! Instead say, “I wonder how we can find out?” It’s ok to leave questions unanswered, especially when the details are more complex than they are ready to understand (a fine line!).

 

Do you have special practices to welcome new students and families to your school? Tell me about them by clicking on the word “Comments” below.

Peggy

Published: Aug-01-09 | 0 Comments | 0 Links to this post