Science All Around Us

All my life I've loved science! Probably because I'm completely baffled by it. There is so much about science that I know I don't know. I'm pushing 40 and I think that back in the day, girls weren't encouraged to want to grow up to be scientists. I was always steered to the artistic side of education. Which is great because I love the arts but I feel like I missed out on something I could have been great at. It wasn't until college that I really began to learn and love science. By then, I was already committed to studying literature, and social sciences. 

I want every student that comes through my doors, including my three daughters and son, to be excited about science! I especially want the girls to know that science is for everyone! And science is amazing! 

Preschool science can be very basic but still complete. Ever day at school we talk about science. For example, we start each day with our discussion about the weather outside. We look and observe and then discuss what type of clothing and accessories we might need. This month our Ocean theme was filled with so much science! 

I think one of our favorite lessons that just kind of came up was about the food chain. It wasn't something I had planned but one question led to another question and then we had a whole day of pretending to be parts of the food chain. Of course everyone wanted to be the shark! 

As we talked and learned about our earth and the important part that oceans play in our environment, I wanted to instill an understanding of taking care of our planet. I have a great hope for this new generation that they will restore some of what has been damaged in our environment. And to do that, we need a generation of scientists! 

OK. That is my PSA for the day…. 

One of the MGT activities this month was making these collages. We talked about ways we could observe the ocean and had a review on all the ocean animals we had already learned about. 

I love using the internet for videos and extra pictures to teach my class. You tube has so many ocean clips that were very helpful. It's one thing for me to tell them about submarines but it sticks with them longer if they can see it. It will stay with them forever if they can experience it. That is why seeing hearing and doing is such a great learning technique. 

We talked about submarines, we saw some video with submarines and ocean life, and now we are creating it!

This is where ART and SCIENCE collide! 

Collages are such a great way to take the lessons we have already learned and put it all out in the open to see. We are using our hands, our minds, our creativity to complete something that we can tell our moms and dads about and use to recall what we know.

 This is kind of a two in one post but I wanted to share our activity from today...
On our last day of our Ocean Commotion unit, I invited all the students to bring a teddy bear to school. We had a big review day and I wanted them to be able to teach their bear all that they had learned this month. They were invited to show them all the posters from our past lessons and teach the bears some fishy facts. They also had some time to quietly ready their "What am I?" books to their bears.

Holy cow! These kids have so much reading confidence. They know they can do it and they do it! At the beginning of the year some of them weren't even sure how to properly hold a book and turn the page.

 The class really enjoyed working with their bears and teaching them. I always learn best when I can teach so I figured the same would apply to them. We finished up work in our journals and instead of me going over them, they taught their bear page by page all the letters and numbers we have learned this month.

We ended our fun outside for a teddy bear picnic. 

I leave town tomorrow for Paris with my husband. I'm working on getting my lesson ready for next month before I go. I wanted to post on how I organize my schedule and lesson plans but I've of course run out of time so it will have to wait… 

Next month… Growing a Garden