Awesome Animal Projects!

If you have been following my blog, you know that we have been studying animals for the past several weeks.  Those of you who have not been following along, I don't know where you've been, but I'm glad you came around ;)  As a culminating activity for our animal study, I assigned an Animal Research Project.  I tried this last year with my K/1 kids and they loved it, so I thought I would bring it back.  The parents seem to enjoy it as well.

I send home this information sheet on Monday and the project is due on Friday.  They have no other homework for the week, so they really get to spend some time on their project.

Each kiddo picks an animal that they want to learn more about.  They research it and decide how they want to present their information (poster, display board, diorama, etc.)  They had to answer the 5 questions above.  If you can't read them , here they are. . .

1.  What is your animal's habitat?
2.  What does your animal eat?
3.  What kind of animal is it (mammal, fish, bird, reptile, amphibian)?
4.  What kind of covering does your animal have (feathers, fur, scales, skin, hair, shell)?
5.  How does your animal move (walk, crawl, hop, slither, fly)?

The only requirements were that they had to answer these questions, and their project had to include writing and pictures.

They did an awesome job!  Here are a few examples:

She made lion ears to wear during her presentation.

No, I do not have a kindergartener with wonderful handwriting such as this.  He told his mom what to write.

She created a swordfish game.  She let students select a number, and then she asked the question that correlated with the number.  The students tried to answer the questions and she told them if they were wrong or right and then explained the answers.

On Friday, each kiddo got to present their project to the class.  I was proud of how well they read the information!  Such cuties!

To celebrate and extend our study of animals, we took a field trip to the San Francisco Zoo.  It was a beautiful day and we saw lots of animals.  We even got to see a baby gorilla!  We spotted this guy while we were there too!  Absolutely beautiful!

Oceans of Fun!

Sorry for my absence!  I don't have a good excuse for you.  Better late than never though!  I know you have been dying to see what else we're working on :)  We have been having oceans of fun!

The last biome that we learned about this year was the ocean.  I happened to have a plethora of ocean books, so I didn't check anything out from the library this time.  The kiddos really enjoyed reading about ocean animals in their free time.  I love to see them excited about books!!

I found some ocean themed centers for them to enjoy.  They practiced putting ocean animals in ABC order in the pocket chart center.  Thanks to Live Laugh I Love Kindergarten for this freebie!

This little animal sort came from Amy Lowes.  The kiddos flew through this one.

I drew, colored, and laminated a few little fish.  The kids used them to show greater than or less than.  I find that if you teach them to think of the symbols as little fish or alligator mouths it helps them remember which way they go.  Fishies always each the bigger number because they're hungry!

They listened to Clark the Shark at the listening center this week.

They practiced building words using the letters in "ocean animals."  I found this freebie from Brittani Black.  I added the letters at the top and bottom so the kiddos could cut them out and actually build the words.  This helped to differentiate the activity for those who needed the manipulatives.

I have no idea where this paper came from.  It was in my trusty files.  We brainstormed "sh" words and then they tried sounding them out independently.  They did a wonderful job!

We used this sorting activity to distinguish words that begin with "sh" from those that end with "sh."   This freebie is from Megan Mitchell.

I found this cute shark book and had the kiddos highlight the word wall words.  They tried reading it on their own, and then we read it as a class.  The last page asks what they found the most interesting.  The most popular answer referenced the fact that there are almost 400 kinds of sharks.

"I am surprised that sharks eat squid."

 It also came with a nice true or false follow-up paper.  I read the statements and they marked their answers.

 My favorite ocean activity this week was at the writing center.  My students LOVE stickers!  I had a variety of ocean animals stickers that I thought they would enjoy, so I put them in a basket and they created sticker stories.  They could choose if they wanted to write a fiction or nonfiction piece to go with their sticker picture.  They turned out really cute.  Some of them got a little sticker happy and went overboard, but at least they knew to call it a school of fish!

"The school of fish was going to be eaten by a shark but pufferfish used his spikes to prick the shark."

"Seahorses lay their eggs in the father's belly.  Fish sometimes go to sea anenomes to protect theirselves from them selves."

I am not sure why the fish are protecting themselves from themselves, but she gets the general idea :)  

To wrap up our study of animals I assigned an Animal Research Project.  Come back soon to check out their projects!

Days in the Desert

This week we expanded our study of biomes, to include the desert.  My kiddos are like little sponges, so they are just soaking all of this information right up!  It is amazing to see how much they can absorb in a week, or even a day!

Once again, I headed to my local library.  I have a plethora of books in my classroom, but I never seem to have the ones I need, so I walk to the library down the street and find books pertaining to my theme for the week.  I love the library!  Here are some of my finds this week. . .

I am surprised by how much you can learn from some of these children's books!  I learned a lot about armadillos from this one little book.  It is true, they are pretty amazing!

We kicked off our study of deserts with a little powerpoint that I found by Stephanie Pope on Teachers pay Teachers.  As we went through the information about desert animals and plants, the kids made flashcards of some of the items (ex: Saguaro cactus, coyote, armadillo).  They drew an illustration on one side and wrote the word on the other.  After the powerpoint was over, we had a little review.  I gave clues and they held up the correct card.  They really enjoyed this!  We saved the cards to review a few more times throughout the week.

We practiced our informational writing this week.  My kiddos are becoming quite the little writers!  I had them write about deserts one day, and then the next day they chose one desert animal to write about.  The coyote was a class favorite!

"A coyote is very scary.  An armadillo can never get eaten.  A tortoise is bigger than a turtle.  A camel is a mammal.  A kangaroo rat has a long tail.  A saguaro cactus has flowers.  A yucca lives in the desert.  A saguaro cactus has flowers.  The flowers only bloom at night."

"A armadillo has a shell.  A armadillo has 4 baby.  A armadillo is gray.  A armadillo is a mammal.  A armadillo does not hatch eggs.  They do not get eaten by hide inside their shell."

Can you believe this is kindergarten writing?  This is without any editing on my part, and the second kiddo speaks English as a second language!  Needless to say, I think she speaks it pretty well.

I tied our desert theme to some of our literacy centers this week as well.  Take a look!

They sorted desert and rainforest animals and wrote the answers on their paper.  This activity is from GreatMinds123.

They learned how to draw an armadillo by following step-by-step directions.

They found the word wall words in their cactus poem.  I found this poem on the Teaching Heart Blog.

The kiddos practiced their spelling words by rubbing sandpaper letters.

They practiced their handwriting, as well as matching words with pictures.  Thanks to Deborah Perrot for this activity.

I hope you enjoyed learning about how we spent our days studying the desert.  Come back soon!

Exploring Rainforests and Grasslands

Biome or habitat?  I had been calling the rainforest, grassland, desert, etc. habitats, however when I looked for activities on these locations, I found quite a few people calling them biomes. Now, you may be wondering, much like I did. . .what is the difference?  Which is correct?  I don't want to teach my kiddos the wrong information!

Well, if you are curious, here are the definitions per the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
habitat (n): the place or type of place where a plant or animal naturally or normally lives or grows
biome (n): a major ecological community type (as tropical rain forest, grassland, or desert)
So basically, I was wrong.  No worries, starting this year, I will call them biomes, and pray that my mistake did not adversely affect any of my previous students.

Now that we know what they are called, let's see what I put together to study them!  We have only covered the rainforest and grassland so far.  We will be learning about the desert next week.

The rainforest is always one of the favorites as far as kiddos are concerned.  I prepared my room by sprucing up my classroom with a tree.  This has two benefits, it keeps my kiddos from hanging on the pole and it helps them remember the layers of the rainforest.

I checked some rainforest books out from the library, as well as a few CDs.

The kids enjoyed listening to the music and they loved looking at the pictures in the nonfiction animal books!  Sorry I didn't take a picture of the books!

I also found some activities to use during centers to reinforce the rainforest theme.  They practiced sorting syllables in the Pocket Chart Center.  This free activity is from Happily Ever After Education.

In the Writing Center they wrote informational pieces in their notebooks.  I added a sheet of rainforest words to the center to help them with brainstorming and spelling.  Thanks to Sally LeTendre for the word list!

I thought this one was hilarious!

"Light snakes are poisonous.  They say stay away I am poisonous.  Leopards are fast.  They have polkadots.  Sloths move very slowly like grandmas."

"I know that leopards can run very fast fast fast."

In the Poetry Center they highlighted word wall words in a jaguar poem and did an illustration.  They also completed a jaguar craft.  They traced the pieces and used the picture to decide how to glue it together.  Thanks Holly K for the template and poem!

In writing, they came up with clues about a rainforest animal.  They wrote clues on one paper and drew their animal on a second paper.  After they were finished the kiddos got to read their clues and have their classmates guess the animal.  

This week we moved on to the grasslands.  We focused on the African Savanna.  Instead of a jaguar craft, they made a paper plate zebra.

I checked some more books out from the library.  My students love bringing in books from home when we have a theme.  This was a great one to share with the class because it teaches you how to count to ten in Swahili!

After reading the elephant book, we followed up with informational writing about elephants.  I put the book up in front of the classroom for reference for the illustration.  The kids drew wonderful elephants!

"An elephant has big ears.  It uses them to fan her baby.  A elephant has tusks.  They are teeth."

They also got to make a sticker safari picture, which we followed up with more writing of course.  They are becoming such fabulous writers.  I am so proud of my little ones!  This was only after 15 minutes of writing.  We continued working on it the next day, and this little kindergartener filled up the front and back of her paper!

At the end of the week we made a chart to show what we know about each biome.  We will add to this chart when we learn about the desert and other biomes.

Come on back to see what we do with deserts!

A pot of gold at the end of the rainbow!

I promised rainbows, so here I am!  We did the following experiment last week to wrap up St. Patrick's Day.

A former colleague passed this along to me when I was teaching in Kentucky.  All you need is a bowl, milk, food coloring, and dish soap.  When I had a document camera in my classroom I did this under the camera and projected it for all of the kids to see.  My class is small now, and we do not have that kind of fancy technology, so they just stood around my desk to watch.

I forgot to take pictures of the actual process, but here are some of the different stages after all of the ingredients were added.

As you can see, the colors begin to mix and form a rainbow.  The longer you let it sit, the more the rainbow forms.  I should have started mine a little earlier in the day.  The school day ended before we could see all of the colors.  You need quite a bit of time to let them fully incorporate.  Mine sat for three hours.   I would recommend starting this project at the beginning of the school day for the full effect.

While the rainbow was forming, we did a little writing.  The kids did a little writing craftivity that was passed on to me by a colleague.  They wrote about the things that make them lucky.  Some of them were really cute.

"I am lucky because. . . I know how to ride a bike.  I have a awesome school that is named Hillwood.  My mom found a 4 leaf clover."

"I am lucky because. . . I have the best teacher.  I have the best dog.  I have a good sister."

"I am lucky because. . . I have a jumpy house.  I have friends.  I have a school and a teacher."

I found it amusing that she has the "best" teacher and "best" dog, but only a "good" sister :)  Haha.  

We finished St. Patrick's Day last week, and now we are moving on to the rainforest!