The Pumpkin Experiment Continues...

Well, our pumpkin sprouts just keep growing...

 But the pumpkin just keeps getting more and more rotten...

Some sprouts have even started growing through the pumpkin skin!

So we decided to give our sprouts a new home, and continue to watch their growth. We planted the entire pumpkin inside a  pot. I'm not sure how long we can keep it growing inside the pot and inside our classroom, but it will be another fun experiment to find out!

Here are some fun Science Journal entries about our pumpkin experiment.

The Pumpkin Experiment

So I guess I've been having a little too much fun in my classroom to think about blogging lately, and I feel pretty good about that. It's been a really great year so far. There's something about the second time around that makes it feel so much easier.

This is a little experiment that we tried in my classroom as we were talking about plants in the fall. I had seen this idea floating around the internet in several different places, and decided to give it a try.

After we talked about the life cycle of a pumpkin, we opened up my pumpkin to take a look at all the seeds and meat inside. I asked my class to make a prediction (or a hypothesis) about whether or not the seeds inside the pumpkin could grow if we just added dirt and water. Most of my class was pretty skeptical, and thought that the seeds would not grow inside the pumpkin. I'll admit, I was unsure myself of how successful this experiment would be.

But we came back after a long weekend to a fun surprise...

Pumpkin sprouts! The class was ecstatic- they were so excited. Every day this week they run over to check on it first thing in the morning to see how much taller the sprouts are getting.

The pumpkin itself is getting pretty rotten, so I don't know how much longer I'll let the sprouts grow in my classroom. But it has been fun for everyone to watch it grow this week!

Book Love: What is a Scientist?

Title: What is a Scientist?

Author: Barbara Lehn

Why I Love This Book: I used this book with my Kindergartners last year to introduce what it means to be a scientist. I love the way that the author breaks science down into very simple concepts. For example, "a scientist is a person who asks questions and finds different ways to answer them" or a "scientist learns from her senses." Each of the simple statements could be used as the foundation for a lesson on their own, and all of them could be used in an anchor chart to refer to during scientific exploration. The photographs might feel a little dated now (the book was printed in 1999), but they still offer young readers a sense of connection with the kids in the book. The book also helped me as a teacher to break down the subject of science into meaningful components. This is a great book for the classroom, but it could also open the door for scientific conversation and exploration at home! 

Pet Rock Show

We had our rock show last week. This is another project that the kids create at home with their families, and then we host a gallery walk in our classroom so they can show them off to everyone. It was a fun event!

Here are just a few examples of their pet rocks and simile writing. (I have to force myself not to post every single picture I have...I always love everyone's creativity!)

The Tree Frog

 After we studied tree frogs during our animal unit, one of my students wrote this book at the writing center. It made me smile!

"Once there was a frog. He was a great frog. There was a snake."

"The snake ate the frog. The snake was full."

"It was getting dark. The snake was asleep."

Animal Self Starter

I usually have some kind of handwriting self starter that the kids do first thing when they come in the morning. I call it "Morning Workshop," and it usually only lasts for about 5-10 minutes. This gives me some time to take roll and finish any last minute preperations, while also giving the students some time to socialize a bit before we get started...(as well as to practice handwriting, of course).

I read about this great idea on Fairy Dust Teaching, and decided to adapt it for the animal unit I've been teaching the past two weeks. At the beginning of the unit, I gave every student a simple book with a handwriting line on the bottom of each blank page. When the kids come in, there is a drawing of an animal on the board, with the name printed underneath on enlarged handwriting lines. Their job is to copy the drawing and the placement of the letters on the line as best as they can. If there is time, they can color it and add details. By the end of the unit, they will have filled up the book with 10 different animal drawings. I really like this concept, because they are working on fine motor skills and letter formation, in addition to animal vocabulary words in a fast and easy activity.

The kids love it too. They have been really excited to see which animal I have chosen for each day.

Here was yesterday's animal:

I picked  a tree frog yesterday because we spent the day learning about these animals using a nonfiction book from our language arts program. As we were reading the book, we got to a page where the tree frog jumps, and all of the kids got excited and said it looked like our tree frog on the board. That made me feel good about my drawing...

Some tree frogs:

Some other pages:

Animal Nonfiction Writing

We have been having so much fun with our animal unit! I wish I could spend another week on this unit, but we've still got some other science and social studies topics to get to before the end of the year. Animals has been such a great backdrop for discussing nonfiction reading and writing, and the kids have been really engaged in the activities to try out this kind of genre.

Last week, each student was asked to write about an animal for their Home Journal writing assignment and on Friday, the students shared something they learned with the class. I loved this idea for making a Did You Know list and book that I found on A Place Called Kindergarten, and thought it would be a great way to document some of the facts that everybody learned about animals. Half-day Kindergarten is so short that it seems almost impossible to spend as much time as I would like learning about all the amazing animals out there, so letting kids do some research and writing at home to share with everyone seemed to work really well with our schedule.

Everybody shared one fact that they have learned about an animal, and we made a chart.

Later in the day, I hung the charts up on the whiteboard so the kids could copy their sentence for our Did You Know? book. Normally, this is not the kind of writing I prefer to do with my kids...I heavily encourage them to write independently using sound spelling and other strategies. But I used this activity to focus on writing sentences, rather than spelling technique. Each student wrote down their sentence and then illustrated it to make a page in our class book. It turned out beautifully, and has been a favorite to look at during reading time!

Baby Animals

For the first week of our animal unit, we talked about baby animals.

I've had to try not to laugh as I read a story or show different pictures, and my kids (mostly girls) respond with a collective and sigh-like "awwww!"

I created a flip-book for the kids to read and match animal babies with their parents. There are some "tricky" animals in there, and some of the kids have been surprised to see how different a baby can look from its parent. When there is some free reading time, I often see a group of kids huddled around this book, trying to find matches.

We've also been talking about how babies can be born in different ways, depending on the kind of animal. We sorted animal pictures into "Mammal" and "Egg-Hatcher" categories to show the differences in how babies can be born. Once again, there were some kids that were surprised at which animals do or do not come from eggs! I was really was really excited when the librarian read a nonfiction book to the class about eggs during library time, and we were also able to learn that there are a couple mammals that lay eggs in addition to reptiles, birds, fish, etc. (they are the platypus and the echidna, just in case you needed to remember also...)

Their baby animal nonfiction writing turned out just as cute as the baby animal books we've been reading.

(Left) Dad, Baby Lion (Right) Baby hawk learns to fly.

(Left) This is a walrus and a baby. (Right) Walrus is good. My favorite.
 (Apparently the walrus is a popular animal this year!)

(Left- sorry, I can't decipher one of the words...) Walrus' have ...and big flippers. His mom has bigger ... (Right) Piggies are so cute.

The momma koala has bigger claws.

(Left) Mom's bring worms for babies. (Right) This is a baby alligator. It is 3 years old.

 And as if I'm not getting enough baby animal talk in my classroom, I've been able to go out and see some baby animals out in my community. (I may or may not have used the same "awwww" sound that my students use when looking at these baby chicks.)

Happy Groundhog Day!

Today we learned a little bit about groundhogs, and how they come out of hibernation at times during the winter. We heard that this year the groundhog did indeed see his shadow, which means 6 more weeks of winter...although, here in Utah we haven't had much of a winter so far, so maybe the next 6 weeks won't be all that bad. Also in honor of Groundhog Day, we spent some time exploring shadows. In centers this week, the kids made shadow puppets by outlining shapes on black paper and gluing them to Popsicle sticks. Today we used the overhead projector to see what kinds of shadows we could make with the puppets. It was some good, learning fun!

Enjoy some cute groundhog artwork, that also reflect some of the things we learned!

Space Show

My students were so excited to share their sun, moon, and Earth projects yesterday at our Space Show. Everyone did such a great job, and it's always fun to see what they can learn and create with the help of their families. It's really wonderful to be at a school where parents are so supportive of their child's learning at home!

Here are a few of their creations:

Exploring Day and Night

This month we have been talking about some space science concepts: weather, seasons, and the pattern of day and night. I loved this art project that our art specialist did with the kids. It is so simple, and yet we were able to discuss and learn so much from it! Why make a learning activity more complicated than it needs to be?

We used 3 different sizes of circles to talk about the size of the sun compared to the Earth and moon, the colors of these from space, the rotation of the moon around the Earth, and the rotation of the Earth around the sun. From there, we were able to build upon that background knowledge to start exploring why the Earth has day and night.

We also watched these short clips from You-Tube so they could get another visual:

The kids have really enjoyed this topic, and we are still looking forward to some more space fun. We are having our Kindergarten Space Show on Friday, where every student will be presenting a homework project they did with either the sun, moon or Earth. Next week we will be learning more about shadows, and we will wrap things up with a visit to the planetarium!