More easy steps for amazing STEAM learning

Recently I began a blog post series about STEAM learning (STEAM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math) by looking at some ways to practice observing and recording data - 2 of the most basic science skills.  Today I want to continue with sorting, classifying, and labeling.

My students have always loved sorting / classifying.  Whether it's sorting building blocks by color, finding all the big buttons in my button box, or separating the mini erasers by shape, sorting seems to be a basic part of coming to understand their world.  Why not encourage it with fun materials, and add labels to those categories?!

It's easy to take sorting a step further with Venn Diagrams - which make us consider more than one sort-able attribute at a time. Do you see the red t-rex in this picture?  It isn't green, and doesn't walk on 4 legs, so the child asked me where it should go.  I helped him think it through - can it go in the green circle?  No.  Can it go in the 4 legs circle?  No. Is there a place on your sorting mat that isn't for green and isn't for 4 legs?  Children can do some amazing thinking!

Once children have begun categorizing things - not just sorting them, but also identifying how they've sorted them, it's a natural progression to count those things, and to compare what has more or less.  Graphs make it easy to compare several categories. (More on graphs next time!)

Children can also begin to label things they observe, from a single word for each item...

... to details as they develop vocabulary.

Don't you love teaching STEAM skills?!

Insects, bugs and things that creep

Oh yes, we got buggy this week!  This is a great time of year to learn about insects, and it seemed natural to follow up our caterpillar and butterfly learning by learning about other insects.  Do I even need to  tell you that the children loved it?!

In between our insect books (both fiction and non-fiction, of course!) we sang a song about insect body parts: Head, Thorax, Abdomen, and labeled a large diagram with the parts mentioned in the song.  Fun!  We saw pictures - including a life size drawing - of one of the biggest insects to ever live on earth, the meganeura.  Meganeura looked like a dragonfly, but it was up to 36 inches from wing tip to wing tip!  While the adults in the room seemed to all be grateful it is extinct (it lived 300 million years ago), we had the children graph whether or not they would like to meet one, and they overwhelmingly said yes!

We also had a live ladybug visit us, along with a nice supply of aphids for it to eat. (Unfortunately they all came from my oleander bush, which is yellow with aphids in some places.)  I need all the ladybug help I can get in my garden!

We also had ladybug dough play, with black beans to make spots.  We revisited a word we worked on last week, symmetry, and enjoyed the feeling of mushy dough and hard, slick beans.

We're going to use the dough again next week to make our own fossil type imprints, so a couple of kiddos borrowed their parents' phones again to take pictures of their creations.  I love seeing them remember this idea from past story time sessions!

We had out lots of magnifying glasses, plastic insects, informational cards and the like, as well as puzzles, all out of one of the early learning kits that are available for check out.

The most popular use of the plastic insects was the dirt sensory bins - with tall, tall grass, just like in Denise Flemings' book.  We set 5 of these sensory bins up on the patio outside our community room, so our families could enjoy the spring sunshine along with the bugs and dirt. 

While enjoying the sensory play bins outside, some of the children helped me to look on the day lilies for "evidence" of bugs.  We found some!  The children told me they think these petals were chewed by caterpillars, probably very hungry caterpillars!

Finally, since we did read In The Tall, Tall Grass, we followed it up with making our own tall, tall grass, an idea I saw here.  The children glued on words, wrote their names, fringe cut the paper to make "grass", and decorated it with brightly colored insects.

So much fine motor development, preparing those little fingers for writing and much, much more!

Next week we'll learn about another kind of animal that is extinct - and much bigger than the insects.  Can you guess what it is?  Come back next week to see what we learn!

Magnifying glasses and teeny tiny notebooks.

We know children learn through play.  Adults learn through play too, if we still remember how to be playful!  If you have a hobby, you know exactly what I'm talking about.  Children are natural explorers, eagerly discovering the world around them.

Over the last 20 years of working with children, I've found that most children are fascinated by the bugs and crawling things they can find in the playground.  I've even taken groups of children to the zoo, only to have someone spot a roly poly, and for all the attention to be on that!  On this particular week I thought I'd add magnifying glasses and notebooks to the outside environment, not with a teacher-driven agenda, but just so the children could explore and learn with them if they chose to.

You may be thinking that your budget doesn't run to magnifying glasses and notebooks.  These magnifying glasses came in a 3 pack from the dollar store.  The quality isn't fantastic of course, but it is perfectly adequate for learning how a magnifying glass works, and if when they got left on the playground overnight, it wasn't a terrible thing.


I made the notebooks myself.  I took half sheets of colored copy paper and half sheets of regular copy paper, folded and stapled them.  The colored sheet made a nice looking cover, and the white pages were for whatever the children wanted to draw/write in them.


I think every child to ever pick up a magnifying glass tries it out like this at least once - pushed up on their eye.  Do I date myself too much if I say it makes me think of Colonel Clink?  Does anyone get the reference?



Looking at these pictures, you can clearly see there was a social aspect to this learning too, as children copied the actions of their friends.  Stick a pencil over your ear?  Cool!  Look for critters together? Yes!  Talk about what you are doing, seeing, learning?  But of course!

What do you think? Were the children "playing" or "learning?"  Without any prompting from me they spent hours observing the tiny details of the playground, and drawing and writing about what they saw.  Some of the writing looked like scribbles, some were strings of apparently random letters, and yet others were carefully sounded out words like rlepoe (roly poly).

I believe this is the best way for our youngest children to learn.  When given a rich learning environment, and the time and tools to explore and learn, children are really good at doing what they've done for millennia: play TO 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!

Dotty for the letter D

 One of our weekly routines is making a page for our abc photo albums.  The children decorate a page with stamps and stickers of things that start with the letter of the week, and then I print a photo of them doing one of our letter activities to face it.  They love to read their albums, to see what they made, and to look at photos of themselves and their friends having fun.  I love that they revisit their learning!

 One of the boys noticed this amazing leaf bug crawling near the garage this week, so we moved it to a tree where we could see it, and be sure no-one would accidentally step on it.  The kiddos were amazed - they kept saying the bug was "made out of a leaf."  Of course, we talked a little about camouflage!

Here's a couple of the handprint creations we made this week - these go in a second abc book for the children.  By the end of the school year they have an alphabet of hand and foot print art, and once again, they love to visit and revisit them.  If you'd like to see more of these, check out our class page on Artsonia!

Since we've been learning the letter D, and doing dinosaur activities, I used my die cut machine to make a dozen dinos for each child, and then had them sort them however they wanted.  They had lots of great ideas: sorting by color, by shape (or type of dino), and even by carnivores/herbivores!

 During outside time, one of the kiddos decided the pile of bones were from a dinosaur - not surprising!  I think we have a future paleontologist on our hands!

 This one is looking for worms, insects, and roly pollies - a future entomologist.

D is also for dog, and my dog, Patriot, is definitely part of our school family.  He doesn't realize that he is a D. O. G. - he thinks he's one of the kiddos.  When we line up, he lines up with us (but I have to admit he still cuts in line terribly), he has his own special spot to sit with us during story time, his own spot for nap time (on the couch, spoiled dog!), doesn't understand why he doesn't get a place of his own at lunch time (but patrols the floor hopefully), and loves to play with the children.

When the weather isn't too hot, he loves to play chase with the kids.  They usually start it, by running up to him and jumping into a play bow position like I've shown them, and then they're all off, racing around the yard yelling and having a fine old time.  Patriot is a lot quicker than the kids, so he'll slow down and look at them over his shoulder, wait until they almost catch up, and then bolt off again. It's a game they play over and over, kids and dog all getting worn out, and then collapsing happily to rest afterwards.

 One of the mommies saw this game for the first time this week, and asked, "What does Patriot do on the weekend?"  He pouts.  He lays around the house looking miserable, missing his friends, and catching up on his sleep.  He'll be ready for friends to come play on Monday!

This kiddo has an "ipad" - "See the button there, that's to turn it on."

I haven't mentioned why I titled this post "Dotty for the letter D" yet.  Well, here it is.  We read The Dot earlier this week, and painted our own dots - I wrote about that in the previous post.  I finally got all 24 dot paintings up on the wall - they are so colorful in our lunch room!

 We also decorated ducks one day this week, using torn paper to cover our ducks with feathers.  When I put them up on the wall, the kiddos informed me that there were 5 adults and 6 babies, so there were more babies than mommas.  We talk about math concepts like this often, so it's just a normal part of their day, to notice and comment on number, more/less - on almost anything they notice.

 Finally, here's the craft project we did on Friday, when we talked about dragons.  I read the children some of my favorite poems from The Dragons Are Singing Tonight, by Jack Prelutsky.
I found this cute dragon craft on terrific2s.blogspot.ca and love that it uses bubble wrap printing to make the scales!  The children enjoyed painting, cutting out their dragons, and gluing on the details, and now our dragons are hanging over the table in our playroom, guarding us!

Thank you for stopping by to check out what we've been up to at Paula's Preschool and Kindergarten!  Please come back soon!