Kategori: English

Use a regular wall map to display digital photos, perhaps photos of where the children live, their rooms or the like.

The procedure will then be:

1. Get a wall map.
2. Send home an iPad, or similar with the children and let them (or the guardians) take photos of the house they live in, their room, a stuffed animal or the like.
3. Save your pictures to OneDrive.
4. Create a link to each image.
5. Create QR code, for example on QRcodeMonkey.
6. Put a needle where the child lives and pull a thread from there to the QR code.

The result could be something like this:

(The QR code shows where my desktop is located.)

Supplies

• Your body
• A sunny outdoor day
• Flashlights if you can’t get outside.

Options:

1.Shadow Games

You can play fun shadow games by calling out different shapes, letters, or numbers and inviting the kids to do their best to create them in shadow.

Or call out movements like standing on one foot, reaching up high to touch the sky, and walking on all fours. Also, choose kids to lead the activity and come up with ideas!

2. Music

Dancing around with your shadow is also fun.

We incorporated one of our favorite silly songs into our shadow play, which made the shadow movements extra funny. Sing the song: Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes to get your kids moving and examining their shadows.

3. Drawing Shadows

Take a few pictures of the shadows they made for the kids to look at afterward. Then invite the kids to draw a picture of themselves with their shadows.

Alternatively, grab some sidewalk chalk and pair up if you have the space. Outline your partner’s shadow and then swap places.

If you want to make some observations about shadows and daylight, draw outlines at different times of the day!

The idea is copied from Shadow Activities For Preschoolers – Little Bins for Little Hands

MATERIALS

Two identical glasses for each child, a metal teaspoon and preferably several small jugs of water, which the children can pour themselves.

DESCRIPTION

Before starting, briefly explain: ’We are going to learn new words using water in glasses- We are going to learn words like more, less and equal. You are given two glasses each and a small jug of water. First, you will fill your glasses so that there is an equal amount of water in both…” When the children have finished this, we see if some children have the same amount, if some have less, etc. By using teaspoons, we can hear if there is the same amount of water in all the glasses – does it sound the same?

EDUCATIONAL OBSERVATIONS

Can all children understand the game? Does everyone want to join in?

LINGUISTIC OBSERVATIONS

Do the children understand your explanations and instructions?

SPEAKING NEWS

Be aware that not all children aged 5 understand the expressions the first time they are presented to them. Therefore, put a little extra pressure on the target words so that the children hear them, and explain them several times in different ways.

VARIATION

Do the same activity with other words, such as higher, lower and equal.

Making the Vase

• Cardboard or Card Stock
• Markers (we love Sharpies)
• Markers or Crayons for colouring

Using a black Sharpie draw a vase design. Be sure to include patterns like dots, zig-zags, stars or even flowers. Colour your vase to make it beautiful. Punch holes above the vase where you are going to add your flowers. Using green add stalks and leaves from the flower holes to the top of the vase.

Optional: Using a green marker or crayon to add stalks and leaves under the holes where the flowers will go down to the vase top. We decided not to, because the kids were so excited to go pick their flowers.

TIP: If you don’t have a hole punch or can’t reach the middle of your craft to punch holes, use a pencil to push through and make the holes.

Head Out Into Nature

Now it’s time to take your vase and head out into nature. Ensure your kids know not to take flowers from anyone’s gardens without permission!

Public parks often have lots of dandelions, clover and more, plus public trails will have gorgeous wild grown flowers, a little exploring will reveal a gorgeous array of flowers in your area!

You can also talk to your neighbours who might be avid gardeners. They may be willing to part with a few buds in the name of education. Or maybe you have your own flower garden to explore.

Take a look around and see what you can find and where would be the best place to find your flowers in your area.

Once you have found your flowers, have your child select the specific flowers they want to add to their vase. Using scissors carefully cut the flower ensuring that you leave a few inches of the stalk.

Next, have your child carefully place the flowers through the holes. If you wish, you can secure the flowers with a bit of tape if they are falling out.

Research

I love encouraging my kids to dig a little deeper. So once we were home with our homemade vases we did some research to learn more about the types of flowers we had and to learn a bit about those flowers. We have Dandelions which are very popular with bees, plus some Wild Roses. Then we took some flowers from the garden. A favourite was the Gerber Daisies!

The idea comes from Steampoweredfamily.com

With the spring in full bloom can it be great to take class outdoor.

Here are some activities concerning different aspects of mathematics.

Outdoor mathematics (PDF, 453 kB)

SUPPLIES:

• 10 Jumbo Popsicle Sticks
• Rubber Bands
• Firing Power (marshmallows, pompoms, pencil top erasers)
• Plastic Spoon (optional
• Bottle Cap
• Sticky Dots
  

  HOW TO MAKE A CATAPULT WITH POPSICLE STICKS

  STEP 1:  Make predictions. Which object will fly the farthest?  Why do you think one will fly farther than the other?

  STEP 2:  Hand out supplies to each individual or in small groups, and build a Popsicle stick catapult following the instructions below.

  Read more about the science behind the catapult and simple ways to create a catapult science experiment below!

  STEP 3:  Test and measure how far each item goes when flung from the catapult.  Record results.

  You will want to use a pair of scissors to make two v notches on either side of two jumbo craft or Popsicle sticks (in the same place on both sticks). Use the photo below as a guide for where to make your notches.

Once you have made your notches in two of the sticks, set them aside!

Take the remaining 8 craft sticks and stack them one on top of the other. Wind a rubber band tightly around each end of the stack. Go ahead and push one of the notched sticks through the stack under the top stick of the stack.

At this point flip your partially made popsicle stick catapult over so that the stick you just pushed in is on the bottom of the stack.

Lay the second notched stick on top of the stack and secure the two popsicle sticks together with a rubber band as shown below. The V notches that you cut help to keep the rubber band in place.

Create more leverage with your catapult by pushing the stack of popsicle sticks towards the notched ends connected by the rubber band.

Use sticky dots or another strong adhesive to attach a bottle cap to the popsicle stick. Get ready to fire away!

TURN IT INTO A SCIENCE EXPERIMENT!

You can easily set up an experiment by testing different weighted items to see which ones fly farther. Adding a measuring tape encourages simple math concepts that my 2nd grader is just really starting to explore.

Or you can build 2-3 different catapults and see which one works better or if one works better with different objects.

Always start out asking a question to come up with a hypothesis. Which item will go farther? I think xyz will go farther. Why? Have fun setting up a catapult to test the theory! Can you design a different catapult using the same materials?

Additionally, you can encourage older kids to record the data from measuring all the launches. Have your kids fire each material {such as a candy pumpkin, plastic spider or eyeball} 10 times and record the distance each time. What kinds of conclusions can they draw from the information gathered? Which item worked the best? Which item didn’t work well at all?

You can also test out the number of popsicle sticks used in the stack to create the tension need to launch the catapult. How about 6 or 10! What are the differences when tested?

THE SCIENCE OF HOW TO MAKE A CATAPULT!

What is there to explore that has to do with physics? Let’s start with energy including elastic potential energy. You can also learn about projectile motion. Newton’s 3 Laws of Motion: An object at rest stays at rest until a force is applied, and an object will stay in motion until something creates an imbalance in the motion. Every action causes a reaction.

When you pull down the lever arm all that potential energy gets stored up! Release it and that potential energy gradually changes over to kinetic energy. Gravity also does its part as it pulls the object back down to the ground.

You can talk about stored energy or potential elastic energy as you pull back on the Popsicle stick, bending it. When you release the stick all that potential energy is released into energy in motion producing the projectile motion.

MORE CATAPULT DESIGNS

Idéa take from littlebinsforlittlehands

A simple game in Battleship style which you can combine with discussing the the effect of pollution on sealiving creatures.

Game and rules: New-Save-the-Whale-Treasure-Hunt (PDF, 1262 kB)

Idea taken from littlebinsforlittlehands.com

Material

• Hourglass, timepiece or timer
• Clipboard

Goal

Hypothesising. Test and evaluate.

Preparation

Divide the children into groups of three. One performs, one takes time and one documents.

How do you do it?

Make hypotheses like; I have time to get to the tree, run a lap around and come back. Get the children to think and come up with their own hypotheses and then perform.

Take turns and switch roles.

Image by rawpixel.com

While winter still lasts – why not try making ice sculptures (this also works when it’s not snow – you make the ice in the freezer)

Do like this:

1. Fill deep plastic plates and bowls of different sizes with water.

2. Put the containers in the freezer. (For clearer ice, use boiled water that has cooled.)
3. Remove the ice cubes with hot water and place them on a high-edged surface or baking sheet, preferably out in the sun.
4. Sprinkle a little salt over the ice. Wait a minute and you’ll see how the salt makes cracks on the ice surface.
5. Pour a little more salt in different places so that cavities and tunnels form on the ice. This will require some time and patience.
6. Drip liquid watercolor mixed with water over the ice and into the formed cracks to create a nice color effect (if you do this outdoors in cold weather, use warm water).
7. Let the kids photograph ice artwork one and arrange an exhibition!