al-mofhariz

Boy did I have fun last week with my students in my after school club of "Green Hornets".  This club is for a growing population of students at my school who are "naturalists" at heart.  Have you ever noticed at recess the group of children that would rather look at the clouds, play in the bushes or trees, or simply pick clover? Those are our naturalists and they love the outdoors! With all the research in the past few years that says that kids no longer want to play in the woods, I started thinking....why not?  Sure, some kids would rather play video games...but I still have a group of kids who would LOVE for us to let them play in the woods surrounding our school at recess.  And then I wonder....what about those kids who play video games??? Have they ever even been in the woods???? So...I asked one of our moms at our school (who is also a master gardener) to come to our recess time on Friday and offer some activities for the kids to participate in.  She has a...

Are you interested in notebooks for K-2 students? How about using notebooks to showcase items from nature?  Those of you who follow my blog know that I am a huge advocate of GETTING KIDS OUTSIDE... I have created a new resource that is available for purchase here  .  It has 18 pages that use notebook sheets from nature to compare, observe, and describe basic properties of objects.  You will also be able to sort items based on size, shape, color, texture and weight.  Another set of resources allow the students to sequence items, measure them using standard and non-standard methods, and classify items as well. Here are two free samples that you can download for free  here : Hope you enjoy them!

I have a new passion...those of you who follow my blog know how much I love and use science notebooks.  Recently I stumbled across a resource for Nature Journals from a blogger who uses this for homeschooling.  Her resources are amazing!! Check out Handbook of Nature Study for a ton of ideas including the outdoor hour challenges, seasonal nature walks and my favorite Nature Journals. The idea of Nature journals is to go outside with a focus for the day and sit and draw what you see.  The kids I work with found it very relaxing and continued to do it on the weekends too!  Here are a few pictures of my students nature journals from my after school club... I see myself spending many hours this summer sitting and observing nature...at the beach, in my yard and at the local parks.  I certainly can not wait....

I have loved working with my after school group of naturalists.  We have become immersed in our Nature Journals...my newest passion from the blog Handbook of Nature Study.  Today was our final meeting and we spent time once again observing the forest outside.  We started with a clip from YouTube:  Planted Earth - Seasonal Forests. We then created mini field guides from the UK site Nature Detectives.   I printed off a copy of the mini beasts picture sort and glued them into our Nature Journals.   We prepared to go into the woods in search of insects! We took:  our Nature Journals, colored pencils, our "sit spot", bug boxes, tweezers and magnifying glasses. Our sit spot is a square cut from a clear plastic shower curtain. It is great for sitting down on the wet ground for a long period of time! We found interesting plants and insects to sketch in our journals. We love to wander deeper in the woods in search of bugs and p...

In case you haven't noticed, I truly am a naturalist.  I enjoy all types of science teaching...but as for myself, I honestly enjoy being outside among nature...looking at plants, animals and the earth.  I am a fan of Jane Goodall because she learned so much by simply watching. I started a new club at our school for other kids (like me) that I call Green Hornets.  I chose the name because our school mascot is the hornet and green because it is an ecology club.  I thought it would be catchy!  We are using the theme of forests as our first project.  We have taken the kids into (shocker!) the woods where we looked at the infrastructure of the forest, we identified the types of leaves and trees that grow in our schoolyard and searched for signs of wildlife that may inhabit the area.  Another day we learned about the white tailed deer.  They are abundant in Virginia and we see them everywhere. A fun activity that we participated in I got from Suzie...

I am a huge fan of taking kids outdoors...as a child, I spent many ideas wandering in the woods, chasing fairies and bunnies, dreaming of a magical world.  I've watched my own sons play for hours in the sand, running barefoot in the grass and catching fireflies at dusk.  Quite frankly, our kids need to turn off the machines and get outside!!! Since summer is coming up, you may be looking for some good ideas to get outside.  The best resource I have found is from the United Kingdom... Nature Detectives.   You can find all kinds of downloads there for FREE!  You can get tree identification sheets, activities for each season, minibeasts (insects and other small animals), ticklists (which are like lists of items you see in the woods), notebook sheets for observation, scavenger hunts, pond dipping, etc... the list goes on and on!  Enjoy the woods...and get outside!

We have continued to explore measuring items in ounces by setting up stations outside our classroom. One of my colleagues suggested that we use a variety of scales for kids to use which I thought was a brillant idea!  We used an electrical scale, a FOSS balance scale with gram stackers and a really cool dual sided scale (it measures both ounces and grams).  We started with a question - Is the mass of smaller objects always less than larger objects? Our students then partnered up and went in search in organic objects/objects in nature.  We found rocks, sticks, leaves, mulch, etc....  We recorded our data on a chart in our notebook. Object ounces grams

Here in Virginia our studnets need to know how to measure a picture to the nearest inch, 1/2 inch, 1/4 inch and 1/8 of an inch.  How do we teach it? Let me show you.... First we started by passing out inch rulers and drawing three inch lines.  Then we divided one line in half, one line in fourths and one line in eigths.  Then we colored each section to show size. It looked like this in their science notebooks. Part two - we went outside to our school garden in search of objects that were less than one inch.  The students had so much fun measuring objects in nature and recording them in their science notebooks. They found a ladybug that was about 1/8 of an inch. Here is a sample of the notebook entries from one child.... I don't know if you can read it, but it says A growing white flower (1/8 of an inch). A pebble (1/4) of an inch. The inside of a yellow flower (the stigma) 1/4 of an inch Ant = Half an inch 

I don't know about where you live, but here in Virginia the foliage is in peak season.  It just seems like the perfect time to get outside and do some observations.  It's time to touch, smell and notice! So how can we turn our observations into descriptive writing?  In the new "Science-Centered Language Development" research developed by FOSS ( www.fossweb.com ) authors suggest that through observations of living organisms, an environment, an object or phenomenon we can recapture the sensory images clearly into very descriptive writing.  So how do we start?  We start with a walk outside to observe a particular object or area.  Have the students take note of what they see, smell, hear, notice, etc... I have created a worksheet based on the suggestions by FOSS and the scaffold that they suggest. The frame sentences look something like this: I observed ________________.  When I touch the _________ I feel _______________.  The ______has ____...