Category: Science Units

Bird Feeder 0

Bird Feeder

LD and I hammered together this veryprimitive looking bird feeder. We wanted toattract the Honeyeaters (birds). He filled thecontainers with water, water and sugar, waterand honey, and water and squeezed orangejuice to see which one the birds were attractedto.

Lizard Skin 0

Lizard Skin

We’ve seen lots of snakes skins at the ReptileCentre, but hadn’t ever seen a lizard skin. Ourreadings about reptiles talked about how lizardsshed their skins whole. Today we were excitedto find a nearly complete lizard skin (about 6inches/15cm long) floating in the water. It’s so great when nature reinforces our homelearning!! Yes, LD wanted to take it home and yes(of course) I let him. Sometimes I’m more excitedthan the kids!...

Vertebrates: Birds (3-part cards and bird videos) 2

Vertebrates: Birds (3-part cards and bird videos)

Here are the bird cards I made (link to download is on the sidebar). There are smaller photos as well, but I wound up not using them (oh well), but they do tell you where these birds are located. Anyway, I chose these particular birds because I selected some short (3 to 8 minute long) videos from you-tube that I chose to show the kids. Today after sorting the five...

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Invertebrates/Vertebrates; The Five Vertebrate Groups

The kids separated things into invertebrate and vertebrate cards. I’m pretty sure those cards were from here. Then we talked about the five vertebrate groups. I made the labels you see below. We have the 5 Animal Kingdom cards here: Vertebrate-Invertebrate Montessori Sort Cards DD used the animal sorting cards from http://www.filefolderfun.com/KindergartenScience.html that you see on the pink file folder here. By the way, we’re going to be sorting the...

Theme Time: Human Body 2

Theme Time: Human Body

I set out some activities related to the humanbody on Thursday, but we didn’t get to themuntil Friday. On Thursday, we went to a wonderful show aboutdinosaurs. It’s a show based at the museum inSydney but they brought it here for a couple of days.Essentially it was a puppet show with dinosaurs.LD and DD both got to go on stage — and LD wasalso in the ultimate act–being “eaten” by...

Theme Time: Human Body 0

Theme Time: Human Body

In this activity we talked about various handicapsand physical disabilities. Then we talked aboutarthritis and how difficult it would be to be inpain and have swollen joints and so forth. I thentaped Popsicle sticks to their fingers and theytried to see if they could pick things up withtheir fingers immobilized. The last picture is of the inside of a pomegranate.We had never had one before and tried it atlunch. LD...

Reptiles 3-part card; Pin-map activity 8

Reptiles 3-part card; Pin-map activity

We’ve been reading lots of books on snakes, chameleons, lizards and various reptiles. We recently visited the Reptile Centre and yesterday visited the Desert Park which has a great selection of reptiles too. Did you know that you can easily tell a legless lizard from a snake? Lizards have ear slits and snakes don’t. Though, with the snakes we have here, I’m not sure I ever want to go close...

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Chameleon Craft (Animal Habitat Unit)

LD: orange chameleon, DD: pink chameleon, Mom: green chameleon, ED: multicolored chameleon. While on the hunt for Eric Carle craft ideas, I went to visit two of my favorite art websites: Deep Space Sparkle and Art Projects for Kids. Art Projects for kids showed a very cute picture of a chameleon. We read this book by Eric Carle: The Mixed-Up Chameleon. (affiliate link) I had the kids watch the slide show at Eric Carle’s Website about...

Layers of the Rainforest Activity 0

Layers of the Rainforest Activity

After talking about the various layers of the rainforest and why animals would live in particular levels of the forest, the kids sorted the animal cards into the various layers. You can find lots of information online about the layers of the rainforest; I made my own cards and explanations. It’s available over in right sidebar downloads area if anyone’s interested.

Rainforest Animal Habitat (3-part card work) 0

Rainforest Animal Habitat (3-part card work)

I don’t think I ever talked about the kids’ sorting of the rainforest animals. We have two packs of 3-part cards — the Amazon and the African rainforest animals. Both sets of cards are from the Montessori Print Shop for less than $2US each. As always, we started with our continent song and the general pin map of the 7 continents (not shown in the photos here). Then we looked...

Science Center Monday: Germs 0

Science Center Monday: Germs

This week, we didn’t do a science experiment. Instead weread all about germs, what kind of germs there are(bacteria, viruses, fungi and protozoa), what is good and badabout germs, where they live and so forth.  Then we all createdour own books (with lots of silly germ pictures!):LD, top leftme, top right (I enjoyed it as much as the kids!)ED bottom leftDD bottom right

LD’s Germs Book 0

LD’s Germs Book

LD was REALLY into this activity. He worked on it frombefore 10am til after 2pm and only stopped for lunch whenit was plopped in front of him. You can see he came up withsome great ideas. And the best thing? He actually said,“I like writing.” His book was 17 pages long. (Lots of pagesare included here for Grandma and Grandpa, Grams andGramps to admire!!)

World Biomes Pin Map and Pieces — Download Available 0

World Biomes Pin Map and Pieces — Download Available

This post is best viewed here. I’ve added pictures and updated this post!! World Biomes Pin Map – Rain Forest, Desert, Savanna, Tundra and More I obtained permission to use the world biomes map and legend that I used to create our pin map. I went ahead and made downloadable pages for you to use. It is three pages long. The first page is the World Biomes Map and Legend,...