Insect Gallery Walk

Often when beginning a new unit, I like to find out what students already know about the concept or what questions they have.  A fun way to do this is a Gallery Walk.  I glued 6 different pictures of Insects to chart paper and put them at tables.  The children each had a marker and walked around to the tables.  They wrote down what they noticed, what they know, what they think and what they wonder.  After we gathered together and read over some of the things written on the paper.  The boys and girls had a great discussion about insects.  We used these posters to talk about what all of these insects have in common and some of their characteristics. 

Plant Tasting Party

After two weeks of learning about plants and how they grow, today we had the opportunity to eat several different parts of plants.  We set up a buffet in the cafeteria and divided all of the plants into groups.  There were seeds, roots, stems, leaves, flowers and fruit.  The children went down the line and helped themselves.  After they recorded what they ate and what they liked or did not like.  I was so proud of how adventurous they were!  Everyone was willing to try a bite of everything!

Earth Day

Today we celebrated Earth Day by learning of big and small ways that we can help take care of and protect our planet.  We read several stories and talked about what it means to reduce, reuse and recycle.  The boys and girls sorted pictures of different recyclables into the appropriate category, graphed thier results and then answered some questions about thier graph.  We listened to a song, "What a Wonderful World," and illustrated pictures for a book about the song.  In the afternoon, the kids were given plastic gloves and grocery bags and we went around Bemis and picked up garbage that we found.  We filled up almost 25 bags with paper, snack wrappers, cardboard and plastic water bottles.  Some of the girls from our class made up a Do Not Litter cheer.  We will spend the next few days talking about ways we can make the earth a cleaner and better place to live.