All About Plants!

Happy summer or almost summer to those of you that aren't there yet!  We are finishing up our 2nd week of summer school, so only 2 more to go!  :)

It got so chaotic with all the end of year festivities, but I wanted to share with you our last big unit of the year before end of the year hit...

Plants!

There are soooo many fun learning opportunities to do related to plants that we have a hard time fitting in everything we wanted to do!

So here are the things we got to in our 2 week time period:

First we read learned about the cycle of a plant and how they grow.  This is perfect for sequencing activities.  First we discussed and sequenced together on a pocket chart and then students did their own life cycle page.

Next we discussed 4 the things plants plants need to survive and why.   We made these fun flip books:

Then we moved on to parts of a plant and their functions.  We labeled our class chart together:

Students did their own labeling pages:

And they made Parts of a Plant books:

We also read the super adorable book 'Tops and Bottoms' by Janet Stevens.  It starts a good conversation about which parts of a plant vegetables and fruits come from (ie. celery is the stem, potatoes are the root, etc.).  We then did a pocket chart sort:

We then made our own pictures using the pocket chart:

 

Finally, and my personal favorite, we made and labeled our own handprint plants!  These always turn out so adorable and personalized!  The kids have so much fun making them!  I just love them!

Don't be distracted by those absolutely adorable faces!  ;)  I miss them so much already!

Probably the best part of this unit is that our school has a Community Garden that we all help take care of.  So we applied our learning while helping to start our garden for the spring!  

Our class planted red onions.  They had so much fun planting in their own little cups:

We then took these into our classroom to care for and observe for a couple weeks.

During this time we kept Daily Plant Observation Journals where students drew and recorded what happened to their plant each day.  Red onions were great for this because they changed quickly so students were excited to come in every morning and see how their plant had grown.

This is one of my personal favorite journal entries this year  :)

The students loved observing their plants.  After a couple weeks, our school had a gardening day where we got to go outside and plant our onions in the community garden.  This was probably the most fun part of this unit for them!  They are so proud that they helped to take care of the garden.

All of these activities are from my All About Plants unit.  It is packed with activities and is such a fun, hands on, and engaging unit.

All in all I would say it was a very successful final thematic unit in Kindergarten!  Thanks for taking a peek at our learning, and if you are still in school--hang in there, the end is near!  :)





 

One of My Favorite Activities of the Year--Hatching Chicks!

I love love love spring!  Not only for the beautiful and much needed warmer days, but also because it is an awesome time to be in kindergarten!  Everything just seems to start 'clicking' with the kiddos this time of year and it is SUCH a fun time to teach them!

And with spring comes one of my favorite activities of the year--hatching chicks!  If you know me at all, you know I love to keep my lessons as hands on and engaging as possible, and it doesn't get more so than this!  Instant engagement from the moment the eggs arrive!

We used to get our eggs through a local university's extension program, so if you are thinking about hatching chicks in your classroom that may be a good place to look in to getting eggs.  However, ours stopped the program last year so we have had to look elsewhere--good thing our principal is married at a veterinarian!  They really came through for us!  I got 7 eggs plus a brand new incubator (from Amazon) for my classroom this year.

Before we even get the eggs, we start learning about them.  We need to know all about them to be able to take care of them right?

First, we discuss how long the eggs take to hatch, and what is happening that we can't see inside the egg.  We read, discuss, and color this little reader:  

We also discuss the need for the incubator and how to care for them since we will be the 'mother hen'.  The students take this job VERY seriously!

We then learn about the life cycle and sequence the development of a chick.

After this, we care for and monitor our eggs!  We keep track of how many days until they hatch and keep a daily Chick Journal to record our learning and observations.

This is one of my favorite entries from this year:

Solid advice! ;)


Unfortunately, this happy spring post has a sad ending....our chicks did not hatch :(
#incubatorprobs

So if you are in the market for an incubator and see this one on Amazon, DO NOT get it!

It stopped working the last few days before the chicks were to hatch--only the most critical days!  The screen on the front said it was on and set to the right temperature, however when I lifted the lid there was no heat--just room temperature.  My teammate used the same one and her eggs did not hatch either.

We had a class talk and while the kids were super bummed, we still had a good learning experience.  We have a very brave, science-loving 3rd grade teacher in our building and she wanted to do a lesson with her class using our eggs.  She put them in baggies and cracked them open to see what was inside.  There were different stages of development they put in order and they invited us to their classroom to see.

While this was not nearly as exciting to the kiddos as actually having the chicks hatch, it did take the idea of what was happening inside the eggs from abstract to reality.  Here they are observing them:

The kids loved to see this--it was not nearly as depressing as it looks in this pic!!  Lol after I posted this pic to my Instagram, I realized this looks like we are mourning our loss at a Chick Funeral!  :)

Our incubators may not have worked but some authentic learning still happened!  All of the activities we used came from my Chicks! Unit.  Click on the picture below to check it out!

As always, thanks for stopping by and taking a little peak into our kindergarten world!  :)

Up next:  Plants!