STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math) skills: learning the content

Are you old enough to remember the short films schools used to show when teaching science content?  I am.  They were usually old, grainy, black and white films (and I mean film, on film strips, presented on a noisy film projector), but the worst thing about them was how incredibly boring they were.  That kind of teaching just didn't inspire a whole lot of learning!

 There are so many other, more exciting ways to present content information, and to help our students learn the facts they need to know.  Today I'm going to show you some of my favorites.

My students love to observe and explore, so I have always included real animals in my classrooms.  My first year teaching I had a fish tank (good plan), raised caterpillars (good plan), had plants in the classroom (good plan), and raised two ducklings (NOT a good plan - they poop a LOT, smell, and need fresh water a couple of times a day).  Since then we've also had tadpoles and frogs, earth worms, various insects, herb, vegetable and flower gardens, a hamster, and an outside area full of possibilities.  Children (and adults) find nature fascinating, and can learn a tremendous amount from observing the plants and animals in our world. Why not provide a way for them to record what they see?

Solution #1: observation journals

Of course, some things are best learned about at a safe distance (sharks and piranhas for example), or are inaccessible.  When we use awesome pictures and information presented at an age appropriate level, factual content can be fascinating and engaging.   To make it easier to find just the right text, most of my guided reading books include texts at multiple levels.

Solution #2: non-fiction guided reading texts

Even emergent readers want to learn about the world around them, so it's important to find non-fiction texts they can master.  

Solution #3: informational craftivities

 Read and write the room activities can include non-fiction learning...

Solution #4: read and write the room

... and so can logic puzzles....

Solution #5: Non-fiction logic puzzles

... and simple sentence picture match activities!

Solution #6: sentence picture match

If you've been reading this series about STEAM learning, you know I also like to make thematic resources, to incorporate science, technology, engineering, art and math.  I love it when everything I need is together, ready to go.

Solution #7: Thematic STEAM units

What are your favorite ways to make learning content engaging?  Is there a subject you wish you could find this kind of resources for?  (I'm always looking for ideas of resources to create!)  Let me know in the comments!

Don't Let the Pigeon run Story Time!

Guess who showed up to story time this week?!  Hot dog, Duckling friend, buses and all.  Pigeon!

Sometimes Pigeon is a little.... shall we say... insistent.  Apparently that is HIS hotdog!  Fortunately for Duckling, Pigeon did eventually agree to share the hotdog.

Our friends painted Pigeon handprints.

 They counted stars on buses (no Pigeons were permitted to drive)!

They even pretended to help him take a bath.  We were planning real water and washcloths outside, but the weather was a bit too cold for it, so we had nice warm bath play inside.

We did venture outside for a few minutes to release our lovely butterflies.

Over the last 3 story times we've watched them grow from tiny caterpillars, to cocoons, to butterflies.

What an amazing metamorphosis!  Today it was time to release them.  The breeze seemed to excite our butterfly friends, but none of them ventured out of their net home until Ms. Debbie and I gently guided them out.  This one hung around behind the others, and everyone had a chance to see it up close.

It's just as well the Pigeon was inside doing fun activities, and not bothering these beauties! 

Butterfly Learning at Story Time

Have you ever raised caterpillars into butterflies, and watched the magical transformation up close? I've done it many times with classes of children, and we're doing it again at the library.

A week ago we received a special package, 5 tiny little caterpillars in a jar of food, and a net home for them to grow into.  We observed the tiny creatures, and talked about what they would soon do.  (You can see that post here.)

When we returned to story time this week, we no longer had caterpillars - we had 5 magnificent cocoons!  Ms. Debbie carefully showed them to the children, then transferred them into the net home they'll soon inhabit.

We read several butterfly books, both fiction and non-fiction, and learned some great new vocabulary: proboscis, metamorphosis, life cycle, symmetry, chrysalis and more.

To follow up we painted egg carton caterpillars, and gave them pipe cleaner antennae.

We made life butterfly life cycles from pasta (risotto for eggs, rotini for caterpillars, shells for the chrysalis, and of course bow-tie noodles for the butterflies!

We practiced the concept of symmetry by decorating some lovely die-cut butterflies.

We even made a pictograph: Do you prefer caterpillars or butterflies?  Can you guess which one was the most popular?

For all the learning and fun that we had, the best is yet to come.  We're waiting for our butterflies to hatch, and then we'll take them outside, where they belong, and set them free.  If we are very lucky the life cycle will start again in the garden around our library, and we'll have butterflies all summer!

Get Hopping with Frogs!

It is definitely spring - at least it is here in Northern California!  What could signal spring more than watching the landscape awaken from it's winter slumber?  The trees are greening, flowers blooming, and small things are skittering about in the garden again - so this week, we learned about frogs and their life cycles.

We enjoyed frog books - both fiction and non-fiction - and talked about a great big word: metamorphosis.  We sang and danced, and jumped like frogs too.  Then, of course, we had frog learning / play!  Here's a pond sensory bin, because regular readers (and people who know small children) know that our youngsters crave this kind of sensory input.  We had fish, frogs and ducks in the pond, and some insects sitting on the sides - frogs have to eat you know!  Do you see the little pieces of bubble wrap?  The clusters of bubble wrap represent frog eggs, and the long strands represent toad eggs.  Our friends enjoyed burying all the pond elements, perching frogs on lily pads, and carefully filling the fish and frog finger puppets with little blue pellets.

Since we were learning some real facts about frogs, including their life cycle, I made up a set of 3 part cards about the stages in frog development: eggs, tadpole, tadpole with legs, froglet, and frog.  The card with both word and picture is a control card, and the kiddos and parents looked at the words to figure out what each one said.  Then the students found the matching word card and matching picture card for each one.  We had lots of visual discrimination, looking at the length of words and which letters were in them, some sounding out, and a few frog noises too.  :-)  My favorite part was seeing the grins on the children's faces when they made a match, and realized that they can read!

The highlight of the week however was most definitely the guest frogs that came to spend the day with us!

 These African water frogs don't need rocks to sit on or anything, they're happy to swim about in a shallow container of water.  Our friends loved observing them with magnifying glasses, then drawing and writing about what they observed.  One of my friends noticed that the frogs had 4 toes on their front feet, and 5 on their back feet. 

 Other friends drew detailed pictures, right down to imaginary eggs.  (One little girl had a mommy frog and a daddy frog, plus a line of eggs.  I said maybe they were toads, since their eggs were in a long string.  She said no, they were special frogs.  Truly, they were!)

Do you think our friends were fascinated with the frogs?  That they wanted some seriously up close and personal time with them?  I'm just grateful no-one tested the (much discussed) theory of whether any of our frogs were princes in disguise, and in need of kissing!

As they left, the kiddos filled in a graph, telling whether they would like the chance to hold a frog or not.  The answer was a resounding 18 yes votes to 3 no votes.  I guess frogs are a hit!

Good news kiddos, we're not done with frogs yet!  In a few weeks, when there are tadpoles out, we're going to bring some in to visit again.  There is so much more to observe and learn!

Learning about insects

I don't know about where you live, but here in Texas, spring is just around the corner.  In the last 10 days our first daffodil has bloomed, and the trees are covered in leaf buds.  They aren't opening yet, but there is definitely a promise of spring in the garden.

Spring is best enjoyed outdoors, and it's a great time to learn about all the little critters that share our world with us. 

While some children are lucky enough to experience nature in a big way every day - I'm thinking farm or country life, or frequent nature walks - not everyone is. One kind of animal almost every child gets to see up close and personal is insects.  All those amazing things that creep, crawl, and all too often "bug" us!

I can't tell you how many times I've taken children to the zoo, only to have them all oo-ing and ah-ing over a beetle or a roly poly.  Sound familiar?  There's a couple of things that make all those little critters so appealing: they're tiny, and kids seem to love tiny things, they move, and that's pretty cool, and there are so many of them that you can almost always find one to check out!

Sometimes it's best not to touch.  I never could identify this particular caterpillar (if you know what it is, I'd love you to leave a comment!), but I try to have the children leave hairy, spiky caterpillars alone. 

I try to teach my kiddos to be safe, without being scared.  Bees are scary to a lot of children, whether because they've been stung, heard about stings, or because their family members are afraid.  Instead of teaching the children to fear them, I like to talk about how to be safe around them.  I teach the children that bees are attracted to bright colors - like flowers.  If our clothes are brightly colored, a bee may want to investigate us, even land on us.  But as soon as they realize we aren't sugary sweet like a flower, they'll fly off.

It's amazing to see the relief on children's faces when they realize that bees aren't out to get them!  We also talk about how a bee's stinger is part of her body, and that she dies if she stings something.  If we aren't a threat - batting at her or bothering her, then she most likely won't bother us either.

 If you have a garden area, even a small one, you probably get lots of insect visitors that you can observe.  Try giving children a pencil and a notepad and encouraging them to draw what they see. 

 Check out the aphids on our cabbage plants!  (Yes, it really is cabbage.  I let them go to flower, and then we watch the insects come, and we also like to nibble on the tasty cabbage flowers ourselves - although not if they're covered in aphids!)

It's no surprise to find ladybugs crawling on the cabbage, and we often find ladybug pupa too!

 We also learn about insects a lot of other places.  With books, of course, but also on field trips.  We saw "Critter Man" at one of our local libraries over the summer, and he had some SERIOUS insects to show us!

 This looks like a bee, but it isn't.  On a trip to the Botanic Gardens one of the children pointed out the "big bee" by the flowers.  I was able to snap a few shots, and upon closer inspection realized it was a moth.  Cool!

I've blogged before about seeing the butterfly exhibit at the Fort Worth Botanic Gardens, but I'll mention it again anyway.  If there is an opportunity for you to walk through a live butterfly exhibit, I hope you will - unless your children are scared of them.  Last year I took 3 different groups of children to the exhibit, and the first 2 groups LOVED it.  There were 2 kiddos in the last group who didn't like bugs getting too close to them, and it didn't matter that they were harmless and beautiful.  I should have prepared those kiddos better for our trip, or let them skip it.  20 years of teaching, and yes, there is definitely still more for me to learn!

 Can you see the butterfly on the left using its proboscis to suck up sweet juice from the fruit?  How cool is that?!

If you don't have a garden area, and you can't get to an exhibit, you might consider raising butterflies.  I've had a lot of luck with painted lady butterflies, which I've ordered from Insect Lore before.  There are other companies too, that's just the one I've used.  The first time I raised butterflies I had them in a cardboard box enclosure with plastic side windows.  Please, please, don't use that!  It wasn't big enough for the butterflies to fly in, so they'd launch from one side, crash into the windows, and unable to hold onto the slick plastic, slip to the floor.  They were able to climb up the corners, between plastic  sheets.  Sad!  After that I made a wire frame that fit inside a large plastic bin, and added a fine mesh cover.

 Our butterflies only stayed in it a few days before we released them, and it was a much better arrangement!

I've bragged about Bella's book club at the Botanical Research Institute of Texas before too.  Check out the fun insect learning activities we enjoyed at one of their story times.  If you are in or near Fort Worth, I highly recommend joining them!

Of course there are times when you need to take the learning inside, and if you are a teacher, there are times you need paper and pencil activities too.  

 If you are interested in insect themed arts and crafts, please check out my Insect board on Pinterest,

there are so many people with so many amazing ideas!

I've put many of my best insect photographs into a fun sentence-picture matching activity.  (It is $3.50 to buy from my TeachersPayTeachers store).

I used a lot of preprimer and primer words, and designed the activity for student success.  I tried it out with a former student, and as you can see from the look on her face, she was ecstatic  to discover she could really read all the sentences.  If you're working on early reading, or you have a junior entomologist on your hands, I hope you'll check it out!

If you'd like to see all my insect themed resources, just click here!

Have an awesome spring!