Parts of the Pumpkin

To go along with the parts of the pumpkin 3 part cards, I always try to dissect a pumpkin at group time. The children enjoy matching the parts they are exploring to the cards. This is also a great time to separate out the seeds for roasting (or to save to make works with)!

September Science shelf

Like many teachers, I like to have an apple theme at the beginning of the year. It is something simple and that the kids are familiar with.. It also adds some ideas for art, songs, practical life, etc.

Solar System Art

Solar System Art Project

This is a well loved, super fun, and visually satisfying planet activity!  We have 9 different colors of pom pom balls for the main planets (including Pluto), a small, white one for Earth's moon, and a small brown one for Jupiter's spot.  There are plastic bracelets for Saturn's rings and we cut out half circles and put orange, sparklie tulle material over it for the suns (we pre-made these).  

Tacky glue works best for this project and we cut black poster board into strips for the night sky.  In addition, we traced a circle to make each planet's elliptical path so the children knew where to glue each planet. (the circle used to trace the hemispheres for the world map worked nicely)   We included the asteroid belt in this.

The pom-pom balls are all different textures and sizes.  We tried to do our best to make it relative to the real planets! 

Moon Exploration Work

Moon Exploration Work 

We are spending a couple of weeks on the moon within our Solar System unit.  We have read many books on the moon, the exploration we've done there, and various facts.  This work is on my practical life shelf. 

I made play-dough with and used my Wilton's frosting dye to make the grey color (I used black)

There are two different sized marbles to make the craters, an American flag, an astronaut and a lunar rover in the basket (these two items are from the space Safari Toobs)

They first make a sphere out of the play-dough to represent the moon's real shape. Then they flatten it out with their hands to form a circle.  Using the marbles they make craters and let the astronaut and the lunar rover explore.

We did put emphasis to not squish the lunar rover or astronaut into the play-dough as it will get all stuck in each crevice!  We have other play-dough on the art shelf to explore with in that way :)

Leaf Rubbing

This is a fun and simple leaf rubbing project that is easy to pull out every year.  I dried and pressed an assortment of leaves then glued them around a 8 1/2 piece of paper- carefully placing them where the poem wording would not be.  I then laminated it.

I printed out the Autumn Leaves poem.  (Print out multiple copies of this for the shelf)

Paperclip all four corners onto the laminated copy and rub with the flat side of the crayon.

 It looks great every time and you can really see the stems and the veins of the leaves- which the children are almost always sure to point out!

Butterfly Life Cycle

These objects were another awesome find at Michaels made by Safari.  I've had the puzzle for years and I love how it matched up perfectly!  It was well used during our insect study.

Life Cycle of a Ladybug

Here is another Life Cycle activity for our insect unit.  I was so excited to find these objects this year at Michaels!  They are the Safari brand!  I used Google Images and Fonts for teachers to make this work as well as a black lined booklet for the kids to do.

    

Animal Kingdom Classification of Vertebrates

For a variation on vertebrate classification (rather than the picture cards) this is using small animal objects.  I just picked up some random figures at stores such as Michaels and went through all my unit boxes and practical life goodies to come up with 5-6 of each!  With all the objects it's very inviting to the child and fun to do!

Sink and Float

Of course this is a traditional Montessori activity everyone knows about!  I just like the set up this year with the laminated sorting sheet and the small bowl for the experiment.  Just enough water but not too much!  I do think I'll change up the sorting sheet with some kind of symbol for sink and float so it has more control of error. Suggestions?

Sense of smell Mr. Sketch marker work!

During our human body unit we devoted a couple of weeks to the five senses.  The Mr. Sketch markers are a fond memory of my elementary days so I made a work out of it!  We got the basic pack of 12 markers and printed out real images of each food they represented.  On the back of each card I used the matching marker to make a dot of color for control of error.  Then I made a black line image of each fruit for them to make their own booklet.

This is how they set it out.

After matching and self correcting each one to the color coding on the back of each card they could make a book using the smelly markers!  They really do smell even when on the paper!  The older child also wrote the name of the food on each page.  We were sure to tell them not to put the marker on their nose or they'd have a mark!

Because the markers are so strong I grouped the 12 papers together with a paperclip and they colored each one separately on an art mat, so that the color wouldn't bleed on to the one behind it.  They stapled it once they were done.

Sense of taste

For our sense of taste we first did a taste test at circle with sweet, sour, bitter, and salty foods!  Sweet was sugar cubes, salty was pretzels, sour was small lemon slices,and bitter was 100% dark chocolate!  They were so excited about the chocolate and I did warn them to take a tiny bite, but they just couldn't help themselves!  We saw some pretty good bitter faces!!

They then glued each food to the paper labeled 'My sense of taste'.  We lucked out and found fake lemon slices at Michaels and cut them in to fourths!  Much easier than gluing a real lemon slice!

Sense of smell

For the sense of smell work we got creative!  The rose petal is silk (a box from Michaels in the wedding section) and we sprinkled rose essential oil on to make it really smell!  The brown circle is cinnamon.  I put circles of glue on waxed paper and sprinkled cinnamon on it and let it dry for two days- worked great!  The cedar is cut from a tree on our playground, and of course coffee beans!

Sense of Sight

For Sense of sight we decided to go with all the rainbow colors!  We discussed at circle all the different things we can see with our eyes and how important they are!  

Some children glued random colors all over the paper practicing their one-to-one correspondence and the skill of using small glue dots, while others glued rainbows like this one :)

Sense of Touch

For the 5 Senses we focused on one each week.  For the sense of touch we put out objects representing soft, hard, fluffy, pokey, and rough.  Feathers, small rocks, beans, cotton balls, and sand were on the tray.  (I ended up switching to actual sandpaper instead of sprinkling sand to avoid the mess).

They glued each item on a piece of paper labeled "My Sense of Touch". 

 We hung them up on the wall under 'Our sense of touch' to display for the month!

All these senses activities were loved and well used throughout our human body unit!

X-Ray Art Work

While studying the human body I lucked out at my son's school's book fair and came across this book!  It talks all about x-rays, shows great pictures of inside both people's and animal's bodies, and it's written by kids!  I read this at circle and then showed the x-ray art work to follow!

 I first drew the bone lines on black cardstock (cardstock will hold the pasta better).  

I had the noodles all separated out on the tray for easy access and control of error.

They were able to do this on their own with the lines drawn in!  They looked great!

X-ray Picture

We've just started studying our human body unit last week and with all the talk of skeletons around Halloween I thought we'd start with just that!  We read a few books about skeletons on days prior, talked a bit about the details of bones, the fact that we are vertebrates, and if we didn't have them we'd be so floppy!
This activity was presented on the 3rd day of our human body unit and we'll leave it up for the next 6 weeks or so!

This was ordered from Montessori services.  It even has control of error on each picture so the kids can figure it out!  We layed them all out at circle, reviews our 'Dem Bones' song and started with the skull!  If someone thought they knew where it was they'd raise their hand and find it!  I walked over to the door with them to help them hang it up.  

Weather Tracking

This activity was inspired by my friend Tiffany :)

Each day at our end of the day circle we track the weather.  Weather is one of the duties on our job chart.

Here are our jars

 We color code the type of weather.  Yellow for sun, white for clouds, blue for rain, and clear for those magical snowy days!

On the first day of the new season we tally them up!

 Our Weather person gets to write down the numbers and we hang this in the classroom for the year adding more seasons to it as we go!  

This is a picture of part of our job chart.  My director came up with this version of the job chart and I love it!  It's a magnetic dry erase board with everyone's name on a magnetic tag.  It just rotates around in a circle each week.  

Sunflower Tweezing

We have many sunflowers around our area this time of year including in our garden at school!  For our lifecycle study this year we are doing a week on sunflowers.  These ones were right from our garden!  We've been reading many books about sunflowers, their lifecycle, and how they provide food for birds in the fall (which we've been observing on our playground).  

For this lesson I read this book which has great pictures and goes along in a rhythmic rhyme similar to 'The House That Jack Built".  Very engaging for all and it tells the story of the sunflowers life and shows birds eating the seeds and then dropping some which grow more!  The lifecycle!

 I showed them this one first.  This is out of our garden on the plaground picked clean from the birds!

 Then we gently scraped off all the tiny flowers from the sunflower head to reveal the seeds!  Each child had a turn with this at circle and it is quite fun to do!

Now it is ready to go on the shelf for them to tweeze the seeds out of the sunflower head one at a time!  This child had an audience around her watching in Awe!  The magnifying glass is fun for them to have a closer look at the seeds and the hole it came from!  Of course, they love this!

Parts of the Sunflower

I am a big fan of the 3 part card activities and make multiple kinds of them for every unit, theme, or holiday we study!  You can find pretty much any black lined master online and it's such a great way for the kids to learn so many different concepts.  Making their own book is always a great take home work too!

This is for my sunflower unit and if you want the master just email me and I'll send it to you!

Sunflower Sequence

I found a coloring sheet online and made a sunflower lifecycle activity out of it.  There's also a master for them to color, cut, and glue once they complete the matching part.