Hi friends!
Ok, ok, I'm here, I'm ready, I'm setting my time aside to finally sit down and blog again! I feel like this time of year is my most stressful and therefore the best time to blog! What do we have, you ask? Well, we are currently on spring break (yippppeeee!) but after that we have...
1. Our school carnival- a school fundraiser on a Saturday where each grade level comes up with a performance based on a theme... Our theme this year is California Adventures so we are singing a California song... and we gotta practice, and practice, and practice, all in a week...
2. Annual Project- a school wide activity where we construct something giant, you'll see pictures soon
3. Student-led conferences- Anyone else do student-led conferences with their kindergarteners? I'm curious to see what other people do.
4. New kindergarten parents' orientation- fun, right? =/
5. Buddy day -where incoming kindergarteners come and visit our current kindergarteners for the afternoon
6. AAAAANNNNNDDDD in between all of this we will start doing Daily 5.... ahhhh!!!!
That's okay though, I'm ready! (at least I'm telling myself that)
Here's what we've been working on over the past month... PLANTS! I see all kinds of ideas on Pinterest and I can't wait to add my team's ideas to the mix! To introduce plants we start by making a plant and labeling it... Yes, that's a handprint! Super cute right? Well, when you don't have a sink in your classroom, it sucks out the fun a little bit... no too much though because look at how cute they are! We make our plants, then label their parts.
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| Handprint Flowers to teach parts of a plant |
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| Handprint Flowers to teach parts of a plant |
After we make our handprint flowers, we learn about how plants grow, what they need and how to plant them. We read From Seed to Plant and The Tiny Seed to help us with the concepts.
We then teach about how each part of the plant helps the other to grow. We teach that roots dig down deep to get all of the vitamins and mineral they need to push up the stem. The stem sucks water up like a straw to grow taller and takes it to the leaves and flowers. The leaves collect water and sunlight to make food and the flower makes seeds and feeds insects. Phew! That was a lot to say! lol... Next, we taste the parts of the plants! SOOOOO much fun! I couldn't get any pictures of that part without having all of their faces plastered on here. Just imagine 22 little faces being grossed out then excited then crunching away! Here is the sheet we did afterwards:
We taste the flowers- broccoli, stem- celery, leaves- spinach and roots- carrots. We also make our What a Plant Needs Flip book... (not all in the same day, don't worry!)
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| Needs of a plant flip book front cover |
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| Needs of a plant flip book- sun! |
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| Needs of a plant- sun, air, water, soil |
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| Needs of a plant- sun, air |
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| Needs of a plant bulletin board |
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| Needs of a plant bulletin board |
Cute right? Grab your copy
here
Lastly, we do my favorite part of the plants unit... dissection! We all turn into botanists and wear our "multiple perspectives" glasses (part of the Kaplan's Icons of Depth and Complexity) and dig in! We have conversations about plants, ask questions about what we are seeing and get down and dirty with learning!
The scientists (we are called scientists during this time, not students) separate the parts of the plants they find: roots, stems, leaves and flowers... some find other things and make that a category! I gave the students some tools to use BUT they could only use them IF they were SCIENTISTS... we used a rake (fork) and a magnifying glass.
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| Dissecting plants |
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| Dissecting plants |
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| Dissecting plants |
PIN ME Please! =)
I'm finally getting around to putting together my giveaway... stay tuned! If you're interesting in joining, email me!
Vanessa
