Monthly Archives: March 2011
Observation Sheet
This is an observation sheet I’ve been using with my students to look into what our meal worms, toads, and our new guinea pigs (Kiss and Fluffy) are doing.
The children can draw a picture on the left and write a few words about what they are seeing on the right. I’ve also encouraged my students to label their pictures if they do not want to write sentences.
If you have the ABC Print font on your computer, the lines will be ruled lines, if not, they will be regular black lines (there are 5 short lines).
This can be used for many different types of observations…not just animals! You could also use them and create science notebooks out of them. 🙂
Pictures of the guinea pigs to come soon!
Kristen 🙂
Habitats
Today, we officially started learning about habitats. I had my guest teacher begin to introduce it yesterday, but we really dove in today. There were two things today that the kids really enjoyed doing to learn about habitats.
The first (I don’t have a picture because I left my camera at home today!!) one was a habitat sort. I taped up four different habitat cards around the room (Ocean, Desert, Forest, and Pond) and then made index cards with six animals living in each habitat on them. Each card had one animal name. I gave one to each child and told them all what animal they had become. They then had to walk around and find the habitat where they lived. Some were a bit tricky so we discussed where they should be. We played twice with promises to do it again tomorrow!
The second thing we did was to start writing books about a specific animals’ (of their choosing) habitat. Each child had a book made with three sheets of copy paper cut in half and stapled on one end. Each page was then used for the following:
1) Title, front cover, authors name
2) The name of their animal
3) What their animal eats
4) What habitat(s) their animal lives in
5) What their animal looks like
6) Something special that the animal has that helps it to live in that habitat
We are only half finished, but they are REALLY cute and the kids are putting their full effort into them!! I’ll try to post a few examples when we are done.
Kristen 🙂
Crazy week!
It’s been a crazy week! I’m talking about my week that has now spanned from Tuesday to almost Tuesday. Last Tuesday, I went to school not feeling so hot. I went to talk to my principal and she said that I didn’t look so good and pretty much sent me home. She made me promise that I would visit the doctor for some meds before getting on the plane to San Francisco! That’s right San Francisco, where I was attending NSTA 2011. The plane ride wasn’t so helpful for my cold…I used a box and a half of kleenex on the way to San Francisco. We arrive around 9:30 pm their time and walked right past our hotel four times because it was being remodeled and we couldn’t find it. By then it was 1:00 am midwest time and we were EXHAUSTED!! Thursday, I was able to attend a full day of workshops and got some really great ideas! I’ll be sharing them in the next few months as I use them in my classroom. Thursday night, I got the thrill of a lifetime…we were invited to a VIP Reception through the Discovery Channel/Education people and got to meet….drumroll please….
THE MYTHBUSTERS!!
Here’s proof:
I was so beside myself with excitement, that I eeked out a “HI!” and a “Thank You!” and that’s all I could come up with to say! That’s my hubby behind me…I took him along because he has family in California and thought he might get to see them while we were there.
Friday, I got some more workshops in and then that darned earthquake happened in Japan, so we were on Tsunami Watch 2011. I FREAKED! I was there and didn’t know where higher ground might be, so I did the next best thing….started shopping for tickets to Vegas for the day–you know to get further inland. After talking with my friends who were with us, I calmed down and we decided to stay put…good choice as nothing happened!
Friday afternoon, we toured the San Fran area by tour bus and then had dinner with the Science Companion President and some of her right and left hands. Saturday morning, I presented along with my friends Amy and Steve and we spoke about incorporating children’s literature into science or the other way around, incorporating science into children’s literature. I jumped on two planes after that to head home and was met with daylight savings time that put us not three hours back, but four!! Talk about jet lag!
I slept until noon on Sunday–I never do that and am slowly getting back into the normal routine! Whatever that is!
Today (Monday), I had the opportunity to attend the ISRA (Indiana State Reading Association) Conference. I got to meet a very special person (one who happens to read my blog…) maybe you know her??
Debbie Diller!! These have got to be my four most favorite books ever written!! I use them all the time. Debbie was kind enough to come over and through conversation, we figured out that she knew me because of this blog! Hi Debbie! 🙂
Her presentation was wonderful and I got lots of new ideas from the two sessions I was able to attend.
I ran right to the exhibit hall and purchased a copy of her new book Math Work Stations and am already half way through it! 🙂
So, it’s been the thrill of a lifetime for me to meet the MYTHBUSTERS and my idol Debbie Diller all in one week! Be still my heart! I don’t know how much more excitement I can take!
Tomorrow, it’s back to school for a few more weeks, then Spring Break! 🙂
I’m linking Debbie’s wordpress blog here and in the blogroll on the right, be sure to check it out and her new puppy Atlas too! 🙂
Kristen 🙂
P.S. I’ve got a new Donor’s Choose.org grant posted…check it out if you’re able to help! 🙂 (I’m in Indiana) It’s for an iPad for our classroom so we can do some wireless teaching and learning! 🙂
Kristen's Kindergarten 