Spring Has Sprung!

Last week was our Spring Break, so to welcome kids back and practice the Super 3 a little, I decided to do a lesson on spring with my Kinders. We started by talking about spring and what they did over break, but then talked about the 3 steps of the Super 3. (I took some slide shots of my SMART notebook using Jing which I love and is a free download by the way.)

 After talking about the 3 steps and why it is thus called the Super 3, we talked about the questions you might ask yourself for the steps. I went to a slide with the question What do we want to know about Spring? and let the kids tell me some things they wanted to know. We got some good questions, I really liked the question about why snakes come out because it showed some of their prior knowledge about hibernation ending, cold blooded animals, etc. These are worded the way they asked them. I just wrote them on the SMART board.

 Next, for the DO step of the Super 3, we talked about ways we could learn more about Spring to try to answer some of our questions. Here are the answers I got from the kids. I asked about what kinds of people could you find out information from and that is where the answer of the Easter Bunny came in! I especially liked that one, but I also thought it seemed like a good answer - he would probably know about Spring! We did talk about the fact that it might be hard to get to talk to him since you don't usually get to see him though. We started to go off course a little here though because once the Easter Bunny came up, several kids wanted to add Santa Claus, but we talked about how Santa comes in the Winter during Christmas so he would know more about that season instead of Spring. I also thought the idea about checking the weather was clever, it again shows some prior knowledge of that understanding that weather changes with the seasons.

 After brainstorming, we read this book about Spring and talked about using books to gather information. Then we also looked at a couple of short clips about Spring from the site WatchKnowLearn. This one is a time lapse of a forest area over all four seasons, this one is a silly song about Spring sung by animals (but they love it and it does have some discussion points like baby animals and waking from hibernation), and this one that is a song to guess each of the four seasons.

 After we looked at and discussed the information from our sources, we talked about how we could show what we learned and here is what they came up with.

 Then, we went back to the original questions and talked about how we could apply things we learned to answer the questions we had to start with and what we still needed to find out more about. I had planned to also do a quick SMARTboard sort with signs of Spring or not, but we ran out of time for it!

This was a lesson that kept the kids engaged and interested which is hard with Kinders. I will definately do more of lessons like this to keep exposing them to the Super 3 so that when they get to third grade it is not a leap to get to the Big 6.

Any lessons you love with Super 3 or for Kinders?

Weather Wizards

Weather is the topic for the second graders right now and so I decided to throw in a little research and text feature practice along with it. I created a scavenger hunt for them to work on in pairs using different books on weather. They had to find answers to questions such as:

• write down three words in your index and the pages they are found on,
• find one caption in your book and tell what it is talking about,
• what is the copyright date of your book,
• why is it important to notice if there are words in bold,
• find three interesting facts about your type of weather, and
• what is the first listing on your table of contents.

They got right to work and seemed to stay interested and involved in the project the entire time! Here are some photos of work in progress.

There are also a ton of excellent online sources for weather geared toward kids. Scholastic has an interactive weather maker that lets kids see what happens when temperatures change and humidity changes in a picture of a house that can go from sunny to rainy to snowy depending on the settings they choose. Weather WizKids has several aspects that make it a great resource including information on many types of weather in kid friendly language, along with weather experiments, flashcards, instruments, folklore, and more. This site is worth checking out for the weather experiment ideas alone. Weather Channel Kids is a site for online teacher resources, a weather encyclopedia, questions and answers about climate change, and more. NOAA's Weather for Kids is more of a collection of resources you can check out to find more. Tree House Weather Kids from the University of Illinois is a kid attractive site with lots to explore. There is so much here it is hard to summarize, but it is worth checking out. This is a site kids can explore or you can look around it as a class on a white board. It includes things from weather comics to information to video clips to teacher resources.

Fun with Snow

With winter finally here since it is so cold outside, I started a snow lesson with my Kindergarteners. We read some books about snow and talked about what they like to do in the snow, then looked at photographs of snow taken by Snowflake Bentley. We counted the sides of each snowflake in the pictures to learn that all snowflakes have 6 sides. Some great conversation books about snow include those below. The Snowman by Raymond Briggs always gets them excited because there are no words so the kids have to follow the comic strip panels to tell the story themselves. There are lots of things they point out like he 'warms' himself by the freezer and is scared of the stove heat. Snow by Cynthia Rylant is a great book for teaching even older kids about metaphors and similes but is a good conversation starter for younger kids too. All the Snowmen series books are tons of fun too. Kids love snow and talking about snow so they are always excited to see the snowflake pictures and to talk about their favorite things to do in the snow (which makes those text to self connections!) Another site they love is this one to make snowflakes. It works great on an interactive white board and usually each student can make a cut and you end up with a very pretty snowflake!

Walking in a Winter Wonderland

Picture by Colleen Kelly

We don't usually get a white Christmas here in North Carolina, but it is still a fun time to talk about winter and snow, especially if you have kids that can't talk about Christmas or holidays. There are so many different ways to talk about snow and winter - snowflakes with math shapes, tracking snowfall in different areas, biographies of people like Snowflake Bentley, looking at how people deal with snow now versus in the past, weather elements of how snow is made, how animals adapt to survive winter, and so much more. In addition, there are many picture books about snow that can bring in various literary elements, poetry about snow, writing about being stuck in a blizzard or your snowman coming to life. The possibilities are endless. 

Here are some resources that might help with some of these areas. The Library of Congress has several resources such as this Science Reference Guide on snow that includes photos of snowflakes, links to many websites, and suggested reading titles. NOAA has a photo library also of snowflakes. Snow Crystals includes a lot of snowflake pictures, ice and snow activities, myths about snow, activities for kids, and more. The official Snowflake Bentley site has a biography, links to use, and a snowflake matching game, while the Buffalo Museum of Science also has a large section about him including biographical information, photos, and more. The Library of Congress also hosts Everyday Mysteries, here is one about how it is possible that no two snowflakes are alike. You could also show students this picture of a snow gauge from a 1917 book and see if they can guess what it is.

Some of my favorite books about snow to read with students are Owl Moon, Snowy Day, Stranger in the Woods, Snowmen at Night, The Biggest Best Snowman, Katy and the Big Snow, and Snowballs. Here are some links to other title lists about snow and winter also. Best Children's Books About Snow and Winter, Children's Poetry Books About Winter, and Delightful Children's Books all list good titles for snow.

Some fun introductory activities online might be making snowflakes here or here, other snowflake integrated activities, or check out Wonderopolis! There are many Wonderopolis wonders about snow such as the difference between snow, sleet and freezing rain; why all snowflakes are different; why we put sand or salt on roads when it snows; and why different states have different weather.

So heat up the hot chocolate and start a trek through a winter wonderland!

Picture by Darryl Abner