Polar animals: beyond penguins and polar bears

Sure, we all love penguins and polar bears - they're adorable, exotic, kids love them, and they make it so easy to include science learning along with reading, writing and math.  So why doesn't every child learn about moose... mooses?... could that be the hold up right there?  What about lemmings and fur seals and narwhals, oh my?

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I talked about Pebble books from Capstone Press a couple of weeks ago, and have to mention them again.  Life in a Polar Region is beautiful, with full size up close photos of many polar animals, and simple but meaningful text. If you're teaching about non-fiction books you'll appreciate that it includes a table of contents, index, glossary and even on-line resource recommendations, but even if you skip over those text features, you and your children will get a lot out of this book!

 

Where's Walrus and Penguin is a fun book for younger children who'll love looking closely at the illustrations (there aren't any words) to discover how walrus and penguin blend in.  I see a lot of opportunity to talk about the pictures, and a fun read together session!

To add a walrus and a few other fun polar animals to your math learning - because really, why wouldn't you - check out these Polar Animal Tangrams.

Every child ever has probably dealt with a sibling or friend copying them to be annoying, so Don't Copy Me!, with a puffin as lead character, will have wide appeal.  I wish this one had been around when my children were going through this stage - I would have enjoyed it even more than them!

 

 Then there's the moose books!  I don't know about you, but I had no idea how HUGE moose can be until I did some research for a moose themed story time!  They can be almost 7 feet tall at the shoulder, with antlers extending even further.  It's little wonder that Ernest the Moose Who Doesn't Fit  doesn't fit into this book!

So surely it must be easy to find a moose?  Not in Looking for a Moose ! There's evidence of moose on every page - if you know what to look for, but on a first read children seldom notice them.  This book invites a second reading, and maybe a third one too... so you know that makes my teacher heart happy!

 

While we're looking at moose books, we have to include Margie Palatini's Moosekito and Mooseltoe.  This slightly goofy moose.... okay, this very silly moose... runs into all kinds of problems, but with ingenuity and moose know-how he gets through it all.  I love Palatini's humorous style, and if your children can sit through a slightly longer story, they will too.

I read Mooseltoe to a group in December, and we all had a lot of fun making our own moose antlers covered in Christmas bits and bobs.  I raided my old Christmas decorations and wrapping supplies, added a few red, white and green craft supplies, and we went to town!  F. U. N!

Read the Book, Lemmings! is adorable!  First, it has lemmings.  Second, they jump off everything.  Even though lemmings don't really.  Which you'll learn, if you just read the book!  Trust me on this one, your students are going to laugh, say "Oh no!", and ask you to read it again.  What more could we ask of a book?!

Want more lemmings?  I created this Arctic Animal Measurement math center to practice non-standard units of measure during our polar animal unit - and what could be more non-standard to measure with than lemmings?!  It's available for download in my TeachersPayTeachers store, along with many other polar learning activities!

Mama, Do You Love Me? is an oldie, but a goodie.  Children will learn a little bit about many different Arctic animals in this book, along with native culture and Inuit words.  It's a beautiful book for mommies and little ones to snuggle up and read together, and the message is universal. 

Finally, I'm including Narwhal Unicorn of the Sea - even though it's a graphic novel better suited for early elementary rather than preschool / kindergarten - because it's so awesome to have books about narwhals! Children love the dynamic duo of Narwhal and Jellyfish, the graphic novel encourages children who might not otherwise read, and each book includes "sea worthy" facts.  Check one out at your library!

STEAM skills (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art & Math) - measurement and graphing

Welcome to part 3 of my STEAM skills series!  If you haven't already seen them, here are links to part 1 and part 2.  If you've been reading along, you've probably already figured out how much fun I have incorporating STEAM into my teaching!

Today I'm going to focus on measurement and graphing - they're important skills for science, math, and engineering, and they're super easy to add to your day to day classroom life.

There are lots of ways to include measurement, because there are so many things to measure!  It's developmentally appropriate for young children to measure with non-standard units, that is, they don't need to use inches, centimeters, pounds or kilograms.  For young children measurement should involve how many _____ long something is, filling and counting scoops, or how many _____ something weighs.

One of my favorite ways to measure with children is to cook: they can measure and count how many cups or teaspoons of each ingredient, weigh things, and of course, there's the fun of eating the finished product! (Look at the concentration on these little faces, and look how they're also developing hand strength and pouring skills as they make a birthday cake.)

You can measure with real objects - like pumpkin candies, paper clips, or toy blocks, or you can use a measurement tool with pictures of objects.

Measurement can also be a matter of comparing: longer or shorter, heavier or lighter.  We wondered which of our vegetables was heavier than a glue bottle - and then checked to find out.

Children like to measure themselves too of course, so we laid on the floor, cut ribbon to the length of each child, and then made a cute display to show our heights.

 There are so many ways to measure - but what about graphing?  Isn't that more challenging?  I don't find it to be!  If you have a full day school program, you likely already graph daily to see who brought lunch, and who needs a cafeteria meal - our cafeteria needed that information each morning to help them prep, so the children moved their name to the correct side of the lunch count graph each morning.  There's so many more things you can graph though!

How about which day each child brought something to school?

You'll notice the children's names are on this one with sticky notes - so I can use this graph time and again.  Children can graph with math manipulatives...

 ...or by stamping or coloring a space on a paper...

 or in a pocket chart!

If you need help coming up with graphing activities, check out these resources in my TeachersPayTeachers store - including 3 FREE resources!  Some of the other photos included in this blog are of resources I've created, you can also click on those to see more.

I hope you've found some new ideas in this blog post, and that you'll come back next week to continue this STEAM skill series!  Happy Teaching!
                                                                                                                           Paula

Are Sharks Scary or Cool? Download this free graph!

 

It's shark week - does that excite you, or freak you out a little?  Maybe some of both?  I was thinking about how our students might feel about sharks this week, so I put together a graph to find out.  (Click on the picture for my first freebie, then read on for another!) It's pretty simple, something you could use quickly at the beginning of a shark or ocean unit.  Of course, you could follow up by teaching your students about them, and then revisit the graph.  How many students do you suppose might feel differently after learning about sharks?

Sharks really are scary - to me at least.  They're also incredibly cool and amazing - okay, I guess I have to repeat, to me at least.

Perhaps that's why I've been busy learning about sharks, and making fun resources to use when learning about them.  One of the things that stuck with me is the variety of sizes sharks can be, from dwarf lantern sharks that only grow to 9" long (not scary!) up to whale sharks at 45' long (also not scary, they eat plankton).  Of course, the great white, with all it's teeth, and growing to over 20' long is somewhat more intimidating! Sequencing them by size really gives a whole new understanding of shark sizes.

Of course, we need to practice actually measuring things ourselves (not real sharks, thank you!).  This activity uses fish lengths as a non-standard unit of measure.

For slightly older students, I wrote a non-fiction reproducible reader about sharks.  To make differentiating easy, there are two versions of the text.

For my younger kiddos, I made this patterning center.  I clipped the pattern strips onto ribbon, and the kiddos clip on additional pictures to either match...

...or extend the patterns.

We follow up with cut and paste versions.

Finally, I want to share another freebie with you!  This is a very simple reading center, which I like to put in a pocket chart or on a table.  I hope you'll download it, and I'd so appreciate you leaving feedback after you do!

 I hope you have an exciting - but not too exciting - shark week!

Valentines Day

Are your students getting excited about Valentines Day?  It's such a fun holiday to celebrate - there's good things to eat, crafts to make, and kind words spoken or written.  A lot of the children seem to show up in red, pink and purple clothes, often with hearts on them.  Valentines day can be a lot of fun, and even although I don't have a class of kids to prepare for it this year, I thought I'd share some of the things we've enjoyed doing in the past.

One of the things my kiddos have always loved to do is cooking.  There are a lot of fine motor skills and life skills involved, not to mention measuring and counting.  For our Valentines day party I like to have the children bake cupcakes - and they are all too willing to oblige!

After our snack, our party begins in earnest.  A lot of parents come and join us, so I like to take the opportunity to show the parents what the children have been learning.  Valentines is a great week to talk about the letter V in preschool, and you can see one of our letter crafts behind this happy kiddo.

Another way we show off what we've been learning during our party is with a modified game of pass the parcel.  I grew up in Australia, and pass the parcel was a popular party game.  It's a bit like musical chairs, but with a gift.  While music plays, the gift is passed around a circle of children.  When the music stops, whoever is holding the parcel takes off one layer of wrapping.  There are always a lot of layers!

 Between each layer, I put a note on a heart shaped paper, with directions for something for us to all do.  Some are simple and fun, like go hug a grown up (I don't say parent, in case someone doesn't have a parent attending, but of course it's their own grown ups they go to first!)  We also have directions like "say something nice to the person next to you" or "smile at someone you like."  My oldest students are usually able to read these simple directions, but if they can't, there's also former students who come back to visit, brothers and sisters who want to join in and help.

Other directions include reciting learning songs, jumping up and down while we count to 20 - just quick little things that are part of our daily routine precisely because they help the children learn and remember.

Of course we have the obligatory Valentines containers.  I use paper sacks that the children decorate at school earlier in the week.  That also is a lesson.  I show them a bag I made years ago.  One side has layer upon layer of ribbon and stickers, hearts and sparkles - way, way too much.  We talk about the word "gaudy", and how you can't see the things that are on there because there is too much.  The other side is what I call "tasteful" - enough decorations, not bare, but not ridiculous either.  Check out their bags, I think all the kiddos hit the target!

Many of the children write their friends' names on treats or Valentines that they bring.  Sometimes parents help them, but not always.  Either way, they take turns reading the names of their friends, and delivering their Valentines.  Reading names is a great way to begin reading, what could have more meaning than your own name, and the name of your friends?  They see each other's names in our classroom so often that even the 3 year olds can usually figure out each name - even if only by the first letter.  Oh yes!  We practice looking each other in the eye and thanking our friends for each card or treat, no matter how small. It's easy to get overwhelmed in the giving and receiving, but gratitude is not only a social nicety, but I think a big part of feeling happy.

Our Valentines learning gets another boost about a week later.  Those of you who work in early childhood will smile and understand totally!  My husband usually gets me roses for Valentines (I'm a lucky wife!), and I enjoy them as long as they last.  There comes a day though when they are no longer attractive on my kitchen counter, and it's time to move them on.  Not to the compost or the trash can, oh no!  We can sort and graph with them!

But we still aren't done.  The children love to pull the petals off, pretend with them, give each other flowers... those roses still have at least 2 days of learning left in them!

 Eventually we take them outside and inevitably they are thrown up in the air, danced in, gathered and dumped, loved upon until they are no longer even pretty scraps.  Some end up in sandcastles and "soup", others dry up  on the playground and settle into the mulch. 

I've used this activity with my own kiddos for several years, and they love it.  I hope yours do too!  It's an easy emergent reader that has children reading "This heart is ___ (color)" - a simple text to help them work on color words.

If you're planning your Valentines Day learning, I hope you'll also check out my Valentines Day resources.

Happy Valentines Day everyone!