Monthly Archive: March 2010

Science Center Monday: Rocks and Minerals 0

Science Center Monday: Rocks and Minerals

Over the weekend, LD pulled out his rocks and minerals kits that he got from Grandma and Grandpa for Christmas. I also had a rocks and minerals chart from Oriental Trading to add to the center (that he hadn’t seen before). We spent more than two hours learning about rocks today! I’ll share a bit more of what we did in the next post. After the experiments, the kids spent...

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The Three Types of Rocks

The first thing we did together was to sing the “Rock Song.” It was to the tune of Row, Row, Row Your Boat and talked about how sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic rocks are formed. Then he put the cards in the rocks and minerals chart. He really loved that and thought the chart/cards were “cool.” Don’t miss our FREE Rocks and Minerals Packet . We also have a Free Worksheet...

Sedimentary Rock Activity 6

Sedimentary Rock Activity

For sedimentary rocks, we talked about how the rocks were formed by layers building up one a-top the other. Then we made our own sedimentary layers. We had different colors of sand (I added food dye of various colors to the sand and mixed it together the night before). We also collected dried up leaves and small pebbles to add to the layers. You might also be interested in these...

Igneous Rock Activity 0

Igneous Rock Activity

In talking about igneous rocks, we looked at the cards from teacherdesk.info and talked about how some lava cools quickly (like obsideon) and some cools slowly (like granite). Melting wax from a candle was like lava cooling quickly and after the wax had cooled for a few moments we felt how smooth it was and compared that to the obsideon rocks we have from the rock kit. You might also...

Metamorphic Rock Activity 2

Metamorphic Rock Activity

We talked about what a geologist does and brought out this “land recreation.” LD and DD took turns taking “core samples” from the earth with the straw. They could tell that it was made of different layers. Metamorphic rocks are made when pressure and heat change the rocks. The oven was our ‘heat and pressure source’ for creating these “metamorphic rocks. Then we took rock samples (below) and looked not...

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Animal Habitat, Animal Tracks Game

This is an Animal Track and Animal Habitat Game that I brought out for the today. When DD saw the science center set up today, she said she wanted to do more rain forest stuff instead. We hadn’t yet played the animal tracks game (affiliate link) and this was perfect! Each player spun the spinner. Then they had to guess which animal habitat the animal lived in and had a...

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Port Lincoln Ringneck Parrot

Last week LD was very excited about birds (wewere going over the vertebrate groups and talkedfirst for a week or so about reptiles, then for anotherfew days about birds.) He made a bird feeder and we bought bird seed tohang on our front fence. It took a while, but today wefinally had visits from the Port Lincoln (or Ringneck) Parrot.

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.

Theme Time: Bears 0

Theme Time: Bears

Today the theme time table was on bears. At breakfast we read Blueberries for Sal and Bearobics. Blueberries for Sal is such a sweet story. It’s a Caldecott Winner from 1948. I grew up canning blueberry jam (we had lots of blueberry bushes) so I always have a good talk about that with the kids when we read that book. I also really like Bearobics. It’s a rap, counting book,...

Theme Time: Bears (cont.) 0

Theme Time: Bears (cont.)

ED played with the little panda bears all day! She even took them in the car on errands. We followed up the re-enactment of Goldilocks (post above) later in the day with a cute book called Beware of the Bears, which picks up when the bear family comes home. They follow Goldilocks to her house and wreak havoc there. DD cut out the parts (above) and made a moveable polar...

Reading 4

Reading

Just in the last couple of weeks, DD has decidedshe wants to read her books. She is really takenwith Animal Antics (She’s not as interested inBob Books at the moment). These books are goodbecause they build, word by word.. I’m making this up, but it builds like this: The ratThe rat satThe rat sat on the matThe rat sat on the flat mat … you get the idea. The pictures...

Cubby House Fun 0

Cubby House Fun

I bought foam remninants and made lots of foamcushions of all different sizes years ago from thesmall ones above to the long, 5 foot ones below. My kids have such a great time playing with these! They are constantly building cubby houses.Yesterday, they put on a long “show” for me. LDwas under the cubby (see the hand in the middlepicture) when suddenly an earthquake struck AND… eventually it turned into...

Active Math Games: 5 and 6 — Math Tail Tag; Math Monster 5

Active Math Games: 5 and 6 — Math Tail Tag; Math Monster

MATH TAIL TAG: Today after Kindergym I told the kids we weregoing to the park to play math games. Theywere pretty excited. Our first game was Math Tail Tag. The kids all had astrip of construction paper with a number on it tuckedinto our shorts. We ran around trying to protect our tailfrom being swiped and tried to swipe someone else’stail. When we got a tail, we looked at the...