The first science unit we hit this year was living organisms. Let me start by saying that the "kit" we use comes with living materials like guppies, moss, snails, millipedes, and rollie pollies {or pill bugs if you like to call them}. It's really set up for ONE classroom to use at a time. Our first grade has NINE classrooms. Three of us were sharing at the same time. It just did not fit. Plus the fish were hard to keep. Some were DOA {dead on arrival} and others had followed soon after arrival. Not my idea of providing rigor to the kids in my class. Let's observe the fish with a fuzzy hand lens and write about it. Meh, not our cup of tea. I decided to add some more to my science unit after perusing OLPBNSKODF {old lesson plans before new science kit of dead fish} and Pinterest.
I took my kiddos on a web quest of animals and their habitats. Then we made our own habitats. As I posted before, Mr Principal gave each of the students in our class a mini beanie baby to keep. SO awesome!!! They studied many different habitats and then once they got their animal, they knew just what to do. Each child got a small shoebox and had to create a habitat inside for their beanie. They turned out to be quite terrific...
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| A cat in a "country habitat" LOL |
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| A giraffe in the savannah |
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| An ostrich in the savannah and a sting ray in the ocean. |
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| We also had the jungle, arctic, and woodland forest. |
After our animals and habitats, the we went back to the basics of plants. They already knew what they needed to grow, so we reviewed. Once we did that we used lima beans to explore the inside parts of a seed, planted them in some cups, and watched them grow. We used our science journals a lot during this time too. We recorded our growth findings and any other thoughts about the process. Once again, sorry about the sideways pictures, but you get the point.
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| We had a lot of healthy sprouts and they all took them home to plant in a better place for this Labor Day weekend. |
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