science Archives - KTeacherTiff

Kindergarten Pumpkin Activities

Tiffany Brosig — Tue, 25 Oct 2016 05:14:00 +0000

Fall is my favorite time of year. So many of my favorite sights, smells, and treats–especially pumpkins! Every year, we explore pumpkins to learn about them like scientists. We read books about pumpkins, and we learn about the pumpkin life cycle. Better still, I know that these explorations are memories that won’t leave my students any time soon.

We explore pumpkins first by observing them in different ways. We pass around a pumpkin and use our five senses to describe its properties. What color is it? What shape? How does it feel? Smell? What does it sound like when you knock on it? Click on the photo below to download this free recording sheet.

If my class takes a trip to the pumpkin farm, we will do pumpkin explorations with our own individual pumpkins. If not, I buy a few small pumpkins and I put my students into groups to explore the same pumpkin. We measure the circumference with yarn and measure the height with cubes.

Then we predict and experiment to see if it sinks or floats. I like to repeat this experiment with a large pumpkin after experimenting with a small one. Students will often think the large pumpkin will sink, and then are shocked when it also floats!

I always bring in different pumpkin snacks to share as well. I usually bring in pumpkin seeds first and put them in a snack baggie. We use this recording sheet (found here) to lay out our seeds. We look at them closely and count them out.

Mostly because I love food, I grab a few different pumpkin treats from the grocery store. We taste them and then graph on our favorites!

And finally, we carve a pumpkin. I love watching my students’ different reactions when they reach in and feel the pulp and seeds.

After we carve our pumpkin, we always do “how-to” writing about the process. We also do many or all of the activities in my Pumpkin Math and Science pack from my TpT shop.

Finally, we get creative with our pumpkins! We had a blast last year turning our pumpkins into our favorite story characters.

So that’s what we do. Now go out and get yourself some pumpkins!

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Magnet Activities

Tiffany Brosig — Wed, 04 Nov 2015 22:18:00 +0000

We are exploring magnets here in kindergarten!

We sorted objects between magnetic and not magnetic. I wanted the kids to be able to glue down their sort to display in the hallway. You could use tape or regular glue, but in the interest of time I opted for a glue gun. This SUPER cool temp glue gun (you have to buy special glue sticks but they are not expensive) eliminates the worry over burns! But like I said, tape works too.

We have some magnet sorting in our science station too. The kids just sort the objects into the appropriate jar. Then they draw what they discovered on a recording sheet. It’s a freebie you can get HERE.

We also put magnetic items into our discovery jars. Another recording sheet included in the freebie above. The kids LOVE the cut-up pipe cleaners…they really are cool!

Yet another sort was done to go along with this cute little craftivity form my teammate, The Crayola Queen. You can get it HERE in her TpT shop.

They also did this little activity to show how two like poles repel.

Finally, we had a math and science night last week and each student was required to make a product of some sort to show what they have been learning in science. We made these little duck ponds to show how magnets would attract through a barrier like a paper plate. I just bought paper plates in the party section at Wal-Mart and had the students paint on a river. To give it some texture, we added green salt dough to the sides. Wal-Mart had mini rubber duckies in the party section. I bought the circle magnets from the craft section and glued a magnet to the bottom of each duck. Then, they took a second magnet and used it on the bottom of the plate to make the duck move around on the “water.”

See the circles sitting next to each project? That’s just painting we did with magnets. Each student had a paper plate and put a blob of blue and red paint on top. I threw 3 magnet balls on the top of each plate, and each student had a magnet wand. They just moved the wands around under the plates to make the paint mix. Once it dried, I just cut out the circles using a die-cut machine. Because the paper plates were big and I didn’t really know what to do with them–ha. But you could just have the paper plate art and it would be just as delightful. Sorry for the quick post–I feel like I was very curt! But my kiddos are calling (literally) and that’s the way it goes these days! I hope you saw an idea or two you like!

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Apple Math and Science

Tiffany Brosig — Wed, 30 Sep 2015 05:42:00 +0000

I love fall! Nothing says fall to me like some delicious warm apple cider or baked apples with cinnamon and sugar. Yum! Here in Virginia, we are surrounded by apple orchards…so we make a big deal of out apple season ’round these parts! Here are some of the fun apple activities we did last week!

Apple Juice vs. Apple Cider Taste Test

Do you know the difference between apple juice and apple cider? Apple cider is just apple juice that has not been filtered and pasteurized. It contains more of the apple pulp and all-around apple goodness. Apple juice has been filtered to remove all of the apple particles, and it’s pasteurized, which is why it lasts longer too. We tasted both beverages and then made a tally chart of our favorite.

Apple Taste-Testing

Of course, we had to taste test the apples themselves too. So we tried a slice of a red, yellow, and a green apple and then made another tally chart of our favorite.

Apple Math

We measured our bodies with apples, and recorded our measurements.

We also did a little apple patterning. We created a pattern with apples and identified the core of the pattern. Get it, CORE?

We added Ask and Tally to our math stations. The kids love walking around the room and asking their friends questions. We also played Apple Spin and Tally! Can you tell we’re working on tally marks in math?

Apple Science

In science, we made predictions about whether the apple would sink or float.

Then, we tested it out!

Exploring Our Apples

Everyone got an apple to explore. They dug for seeds, and placed them on a ten frame. Then, they talked bout their seeds with the person across from them. They had to tell who had more seeds and who had fewer.

We also made easy applesauce. You can read about that HERE, where I blogged over at iTeachKinder.

Of course, had to do a little apple print art. We made trees and used apple prints as the leaves.

If you’d like to see more apple ideas, you can check out some of last year’s apple fun HERE!

The Apple sheets in this post are from my Apple Math and Science Pack on TpT.

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