Hibernation Inquiry

Have you read Jan Brett's new book called The Snowy Nap? It is about Hedgie (the hedgehog from The Hat) trying to stay up to see what his animal friends do during the winter before he hibernates.

If you haven't seen this book, you must check it out! Jan Brett's books and illustrations are always so captivating for kids and adults alike.  I love the little cut out pictures on the side and how you can talk about what is happening in the side pictures while the characters are doing something else in the story.  It is just great for developing executive function skills and theory of mind.  We loved using our retelling cards to retell and then act out the story.

Then, we couldn't forget our hedgehog snack! Each Friday we make a snack to match our theme... it gives us something to look forward to! We used pre-made sugar cookies, frosting, chocolate chips, and cocoa krispies. Didn't they turn out cute?

After reading The Snowy Nap, we had so many questions about hibernation.  {Which animals hibernate? Why do they hibernate? Where do they hibernate?} We did a little research to figure out our answers and then made a poster to teach others what we learned.  I helped by drawing some of the background and giving them pictures to color so that we could focus on interactive writing.  We used our favorite Kwik Stix paint for our mural. If you haven't tried them you must! They are paint sticks that dry in 60 seconds...amazing! If you'd like to try them, you can click here and use the code COFFEETALK10 for 10% off (affiliate link).

We also enjoyed reading A Time to Sleep to help us better understand the variety of the animals that hibernate and where they hibernate.

To answer the question "why do animals hibernate?", I froze blueberries in a container and asked the kids to pretend to be hungry bears and get enough berries to eat out of the ice.  They tried dropping the ice on the table to break it or digging the berries out of the ice, but they couldn't get enough to be full.  We left the frozen berries in the container overnight and observed that we could get all the berries out when the ice melted.

We made a bear paw for snack out of a graham cracker, Reese's cup, chocolate chips, and peanut butter. 

Do you teach about hibernation in your classroom? What are your favorite activities and books?

Happy Teaching!

Nocturnal Animals Research Project

Nocturnal animals are seriously fascinating for kindergarteners.   What kindergartener wouldn't want to stay up all night? Plus, we get to learn cool words like mammal and echolocation. We started our research project by sorting between pictures of nocturnal and diurnal animals (not pictured) and watching a video from the Let's Find Out magazine website from Scholastic.  I use those videos for EVERYTHING. They are just long enough to peak the kids interest and stir up a lot of questions.  With our interest peaked, we decided to focus in on bats and owls. Then, we labeled a bat as a group and then on our own.

After labeling a bat, we read through some non-fiction bat books that I have from Scholastic and National Geographic Kids. We used these to help us complete our can, have, are chart.

This chart was not completed in one session.  We started it and then added to it as we did more research. I love how kindergarteners can do research by looking at photographs in non-fiction books. My students were fascinated that bats eat so many types of food, even watermelon! 

Next step: learning about echolocation. This is always a fan favorite. We watch the episode from "The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That" with bats that shows how echolocation works and then make our own bat ears. 

The kids wanted to be sure that they were using colors that made sense so they looked through the books to check. Then we simulated echolocation by rolling a ball to the wall and watching it come back to us while squeaking like a bat.

It wouldn't be a fun unit without a snack! We made bats with double stuffed Oreos, frosting, and decorative candy eyes. They turned out super cute! (full disclosure: this is not my hand... it is the hand of one of the speech pathologists at my school who is much taller than me and has longer arms to better take a picture...lol)

The kids were so excited about all of the things they learned that we made two posters to teach others what we learned about bats. We painted the background with tempra paint and then used our favorite non-messy Kwik Stix paint to make the bats, trees, and bat food. If you haven't tried Kwik Stix, I promise they will change your life! They are solid tempra paint sticks that dry in 60 seconds. Can we say game changer?

Bats during the day:

 Bats at night:

We compared and contrasted bats and owls and made another can, have, are chart to help us organize our thinking.

We labeled and owl and then we made an owl snack. To make this snack you will need graham crackers, marshmallows, m&ms, and candy corn.

What activities do you do during your nocturnal animals unit?

Happy Teaching!

Fun and Easy St. Patrick's Day Ideas for your Classroom

St. Patrick's Day is always a magical time for our students. The little leprechaun that comes to visit our classroom adds so much fun and excitement to an engaging week of learning.

Some of my favorite books to read with the kids during this week include:









Everyone knows that if you want to catch a leprechaun, you have to find one and the best way to do that is to look at the end of a rainbow. But where can we find a rainbow? How are they made? What type of weather do we need to see a rainbow? This simple science experiment is a great way to begin investigating these answers. All you need is a dark room, a small mirror, a glass of water, and a flashlight. Place the mirror in the cup of water and shine the flashlight at the mirror. A rainbow will appear on your wall or ceiling. You can see each of the bands of light and it is fascinating! This is one of my students drawings of the different color bands.

Some other great resources to check out for videos about this topic is the StoryBots episode: Why is the Sky Blue? (There is a part where an artist shows the different colors of light). Astronomer Amy from Ready, Jet, Go also has a nice clip about prisms and how they work.

Learning about rainbows cannot be complete without the Skittles science experiment.  It is so fun and easy.  All you need to do it put the skittles in a circle around a plate, pour water on top, and watch the magic happen!

The leprechaun is a pretty tricky little guy and likes to visit our classroom while my students are away.  Last year he left ingredients for a shamrock shake, fun leprechaun rocks, and even peed in our toilet.  Well, only because we asked him to… lol. This is a great opportunity for a little letter writing practice.  We tried to catch him, but unfortunately we were unsuccessful.  Maybe next year...

Leprechaun rocks are super easy to make.  All you need is gold coins, baking soda, water, and green food coloring.  Check out the Gift of Curiosity's blog post on how to make these.  When the leprechaun drops off these rocks, make sure to leave "water" in a bottle next to them... The last trick is that the water is actually vinegar.

So fun!

Shamrock Shakes are easy to make and so cute! We put a little green food coloring on the bottom of our cups, added a scoop of vanilla ice cream, poured Sprite on top, and then added rainbow sprinkles on top. 

And to top off our fun, we even had some St. Patrick's Day math interactive notebooks.

You can find these in my  Teachers Pay Teachers store if you are interested 

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Polar Animal Inquiry

Learning about polar animals is always a favorite in January.  I love helping students learn that some of the animals they thought may have lived together actually live in different parts of the world. When doing research, I always like to start by allowing them to browse a non-fiction books about the topic to spark their interest and help them get ready to ask questions.  

Then, we sorted arctic and an arctic animals. This gives me some nice information about prior knowledge and student interest.  (Check out Simply Kinder's website for some Kindergarten ready videos) I find that while my students may not have strong background knowledge for this topic, once they see the videos, they are always excited to learn more. We also completed a “I see, I think, I wonder” chart.  This year, my students were super interested in penguins and fascinated by the narwhal.  

The kids always want to know how the animals stay warm in the cold waters.  The classic blubber glove experiment is a great science experiment to help kids through the scientific process. It is so great to see their hypotheses and then construct their own knowledge from the experiment.  Usually, kids think animals just have thick fur. We always take a look at walruses and wonder what they do because they don’t have fur like a polar bear.  The kids put their hands in the water with ice (this year I added some arctic animals from the Safari Toob) to see what that felt like.  Then, they tried the blubber glove and were amazed at the difference.  We used the left over water to grow our water beads and then put the animals from our experiment into the water beads. 

We also made these cute polar bear cups.  You will need ice cream cups, chocolate chips, and mini Nilla Wafers. 

During our literacy workstations, the students were able to use “snow” playdough, the Toob animals, and glass pebbles (from Michaels) on a mirror to tell stories. They also used the water beads for storytelling as well. The kids helped decide to split our water beads in half so that one tub could be Arctic animals and the other could be Antarctic animals. We could NOT mix the two...lol! These non-fiction books were in Chick-fil-a kids meals last year.  A student brought them in to share with the class.

Two of my favorite fiction books to read during this unit are “The Three Snow Bears” by Jan Brett and “Dear Polar Bear”.  “The Three Snow Bears” is an arctic version of “The Three Little Bears” and great for retelling or acting out.  “Dear Polar Bear” is a book about a lonely polar bear who writes letters to his bear friends around the world and a penguin postman who delivers them.  The best part about this book is a map in the beginning of the book that shows how the penguin traveled to each part of the world to deliver the letters.  

Click on the picture to go to Jan Brett's website

Click on the picture to go to Amazon to check out the book

The last part of our inquiry was about penguins.  We watched a penguin video from Scholastic News and read a non-fiction book about penguins. We learned that emperor penguins are 4 ft tall so we use a tape measure to draw an emperor penguin to scale on butcher paper.  Then, we stood next to the penguins to see how tall we were compared to a penguin. Then we learned how penguins kept their eggs in their feet so we used a ball to practice walking with an egg.  This brought about lots of laughs.  Then we huddled together for warmth.  

We ended the unit with a stem challenge. I froze the Toob animals in small mason jars. The kids were presented with the problem: Your animals are stuck in the ice.  You only have salt, a plastic spoon, and a plastic knife.  How will you get the animals out of the ice?

Happy Teaching!