Releasing Ladybugs

 I have got to say, this picture is precious!

Our Insect Zoo unit is updated! If you have purchased it, be sure to download the update. If not, you might consider checking out this great unit filled with buggy fun!

This (120 page) Insect unit is strategically linked to common core standards. It is divided into areas of literature, media, music, art, literacy activities, math activities, worksheets, science activities, creative writing, word wall words, and guided reading. The activities are clearly written, easy to use, and need limited amounts of preparation. 

Literacy Activities:

Fly Away Fly: Letter Identification
Fly Away Words: Sight Word Recognition
Buggy Bug Match: Sight Word (or Alphabet) Match
Bug Rhymes: Matching Rhymes
Ladybug Spots: Recognizing Words in Speech.
Letters Buzzing In My Name: Recognizing/Writing Letters In Names
Independent Activities
Trace & Write Letters A-Z

Math Activities:

Catching Insects: Sorting
My Bug Collection: Addition
Bug-a-Boo: Geometric Shapes
Construct a Bug: Exploring Probability.
Bugs Count: Developing Number Sense 

Science Activities

Creating an Insect Zoo
Insect Memory: Matching Identical Insects.
Insect Observation: Observing Features
Insect Magnification:Using Scientific Tools
Independent Activities
Insect Body Parts


Songs/Fingerplays

Freddy Flea
The Firefly & Other Insects
The Bees

Guided Reading Books
The Insects- Level A
The Insects- Level C
Little Ladybugs

Writing Prompts/Word Wall

Our Insect Zoo
All About Lady Bugs
Insect Word Wall Words

Art Projects
Ladybug Ladybug
My Insect
Baby Bumblebee
Paint a Bug

Plant Investigations

Examining the parts of a plant is a fascinating experience. Choose one or two different plants and take them out of their pots. Shake off dirt to expose the roots. Lay the plants on a table or counter along with some magnifying glasses. Help students identify the flower, leaves, stem, and roots of the plants. After discussing the purpose of each plant part, have the students draw a plant, complete with roots. 

For a scripted lesson of this activity and other great plant games and ideas, 
check out our plant unit.

Kindergarten Planets

Bring on the Snow

Whether the meteorologist is predicting snow or not, you can plan a snow day in your room! Check out SteveSpangler.com  (or of course Amazon  for an artificial snow that is fluffy and fun. Your students can help you mix up the snow, then make observations as they compare it to real snow. This sensory activity makes a great addition to any winter-related or weather unit!

For more winter fun, check out our units Crazy for Snowmen and White Wonderful Winter.

The Five Senses

We took a fall field trip to the local Youth Garden Project and enjoyed a great lesson on the Five Senses.

Seed in a Bag

Learning about the parts of a plant takes on a new dimension when planting a bean seed in a baggie. The leaves, stem, and roots are all visible in the bag. In less than two weeks, students can see the stages of plant development. They can see the baby plant as soon as it pushes its way through the seed coat, examine the roots, measure the stem, and watch as the leaves unfurl and grow. Changes occur almost daily, so students enthusiastically make observations and comparisons.

This exciting science activity fits in with many units; plants and spring are obvious choices, but if you think outside the box it can fit into a dinosaur or fairy tale unit!  For detailed instructions, visit our online store and check out our 

Plant unit.

Space, the Final Frontier

If you want to capture the attention of your students, just introduce the theme of space! Kindergarten kids love the mystery and excitement of space and space exploration. As an added bonus, they are willing to work on almost any skill if you give it a space twist. In the past two weeks, Kathleen's class have practiced literacy skills such as blending, segmenting, decoding, naming sight words, reading simple books, and writing. In math they have counted by tens, practiced addition, and solved word problems. 

In addition to literacy and math skills, they developed science vocabulary and learned facts about our universe. Through a solar system construct project, the students worked cooperatively to create the sun and planets. Later they followed directions to design astronauts. 

Through a unit on space, you can meet the needs of all of your students. You can tailor your activities to support struggling students, help on-level students move up another step, and challenge high students. For ideas and lessons, check out our unit, Out In Space.

And add some alien variety by joining this unit with our Alien unit!

Building Brain Power By Hand

During our exploration of insects, I challenged the students (during rotation time) to build a bug city at the Construction Center. It's amazing to me to watch what the students come up with when given a task like this because it's a clear demonstration of their level of critical thinking. For example, these pictures show what one of the groups was able to construct:

Notice how they have built up from the table, how they have made nooks for individual bugs, even how they have sorted the bugs by type to let bugs of the same family "live" together. 

It is of great importance to have activities such as this available in my classroom; because our hands are so important to our brains. By using our hands to build, to touch, to explore, we form connections that help us not only to understand the world around us, but to think about the world around us.

Here are some other skills the children are developing by working at the Construction Center:

--Respecting the work of others

--Making choices and decisions

--Negotiating ideas

--Using creative, divergent thinking

--Dialoguing and problem solving

--Determining how real objects fit together

--Experimenting with the properties of physical objects, such as gravity, weight, stability, and balance

Amazing Water

Water is amazing! It covers over 70 percent of the earth and makes up over 70 percent of the human body. Beyond it’s importance in our lives, water is fun! 

Water can be studied at almost any time of the year. Water lessons easily fit into ocean, winter, weather, and spring units. Learning about evaporation, the states of matter, water tension, water flow, sink or float, etc. gives students opportunities to experiment and use scientific process skills.

Water bottles are a favorite water activity for most kindergartners. Wave, pearl swirl, fountain, and tornado bottles help students learn about water currents, flow, and movement.  Check out Steve Spangler for Pearl Swirl Concentrate and both tornado and fountain connectors. The bottle connectors can also be purchased from Amazon. Directions for the wave bottle can be found in our Ocean unit, and our Weather unit features many water lessons. Water is amazing!

We Made Crystals!

As part of our winter unit, Kathleen's class made crystals this week. Sugar, salt, and snowflakes are examples of crystals...so is borax. Borax, a cleaning product found in the laundry aisle, makes (almost) no-fail crystals. 

On the first day, we mixed hot water and borax. The kids wrote their names on craft sticks and made designs with pipe cleaners. 

After pouring the borax solution into cups, we added the pipe cleaners and set the cups aside. 

On the next day the kids poured the water off and examined their crystals! We wrote about the experiment, then bagged everything up for the trip home. 

Find complete directions in our White Wonderful Winter unit!

Sensational Spiders

Spinning a Web at the Science Center

Making a Spider for my Head at the Art Center

Check out our new spider unit! Contents include:

Great New Thematic Unit!

Shared Reading Activities
I’M A SPIDER: Building Metacognition Skills

Scripted Literacy Activities:
Spider Soup: Identifying Alphabet Letters
The Sneaky Spider: Producing Rhyming Words
Home Sweet Web: Matching Alphabet Letters
Spider Walk: Beginning Sounds
Web Treasures: Sorting Objects into Categories

Independent Language Arts Activities
Category Sort: Identifying Word Meanings & Nuances
Spin a Web: ABC Order

Scripted Math Activities:
The Hungry Spiders: Identifying Numbers
Spider Shapes: Identifying Shapes

Independent Math Activities
Spider Frames: Counting and Cardinality
Spider Legs: Decomposing Numbers
Fill The Web: Ten Frame Hunt

Writing Prompts/Word Wall
Spider Word Wall
Writing Prompts:
Eensy Wensy Spider
Do I Like Spiders?


Guided Reading Books
Are You a Spider? Level A
Are You a Spider? Level C

Kitchen
Spider Cookie

Science
The Arachnid (Science Journal Labels)
Spider Facts
Sticky Spiders

Art Projects
Glitter Spider Web
Spider Construct
Spider Hat

Songs
Spin, Spin, Spin a Web
A Spider Song
Ten Little Spiders

Alien Planet

After we learned the science of outer space and important real facts, we investigated those crazy Aliens such as "The Jigaree" by Joy Cowley and "Aliens Love Underpants" by Claire Freedman.

Take your students on a trip to "Alien Planet!"

 This 99 page unit, Alien Planet, is strategically linked to the Common Core Standards. It is divided into areas of literature, music, art, literacy, math, worksheets, science, creative writing, word wall, and guided reading. The activities are clearly written, easy to use, and need limited amounts of preparation. The lessons (games or activities) included are scripted. They are written in a format that can be easily taught by the teacher or readily handed off to a parent volunteer or a classroom aide with complete confidence that objectives of the lesson will be reached. 

Table of Contents:

Scripted Literacy Lessons With Independent Options:

Speak Alien Please: Segmenting Words

Alien Hop and Swat: Decoding and Segmenting CVC Words

Alien Zinger: Reading Sight Words (or Alphabet Letters) Fluently

Sentence Scramble: Reading and Constructing Sight Word Sentences

Alien Attack: Fluently Naming Alphabet Letters

Scripted Math Lessons With Independent Options:

Blast Off Bingo: Numbers 11-30

Teen Time Disco: Identifying and Matching Teen Numbers

Astro Park: Collecting and Recording Data

Aliens Away: Subtracting Objects

Guided Reading Books

The  Little Alien

Class Made Books

All About Aliens

Science

Alien Goo: Mixing Substances

Writing

Alien Word Wall

The UFO

All About Aliens

Art Projects

Alien Headbands

Construct an Alien

UFO

Songs/Fingerplays

Five Little Aliens

The Alien