Foss Friday and Peek at My Week

It has a busy week in the Science School Yard. It is Farm to School Garden time and three new FOSS kits are starting this next week. Busy...busy... I am linking up with my blogger buds at

 Mrs. Laffin's Laughings and  Mrs. Will's Kindergarten for this linky party!

This week in the School Yard:
Kinders- What are seeds? We are starting with a poster entitled...Seeds with the words CAN, ARE, HAVE, NEED. Our kinders don't seem to know much about seeds. They say that seeds have stems and flowers. That my cuties is a plant. I then hand out the variety of seeds I have that we plant in our school garden. Our garden is cleaned out and ready to go! We then go back to the poster where we now add what we know about seeds. I read the story The Garden We Grow. Or kinders will be planting a kinder"garden" starting next week. They are growing a pumpkin patch for next fall where they will be able to see how they grow and the plants grow too. It takes time to get big doesn't it. I read the story and add in our kinder"garden" after each page...until we pick the pumpkins...in first grade. They love it. I get to practice on one class before the start of next week. It went well.

Firsties- are using the FOSS kit insects, but before we get our meal worms and painted ladies, we need to know what an insect is. We read the book Do You Know about Insects? But before we read it, we add to a poster what we know and our misconceptions...then we learn from the book and add what we learned. As I read I sing the song head, thorax, abdomen to head, shoulders, knees, and toes. Cute stuff. We also chant, egg, larva, pupa, adult. Yea! They remember then! We then make an insect, but remember what everyone of our insects must have when we make it. We build a bug and add it to our board. We finish with a bug hunt outside.

2nd graders- Plants! I love this unit. It sure helps when we grow our own garden at school. I am using our Plant Unit that I made with two other science teachers to incorporate NGSS and FOSS. Plants: A Comprehensive Unit. I will start with building a greenhouse. We want to also know what plants need. We will use the story A Seed Is Sleepy to learn about seeds first. We will be opening up a seed and taking a look inside. I will add a sheet next week that I am adding to the unit.

3rd graders- Sound is the name of the game. We learned about the difference between pitch and volume. We will be reviewing with a quick quiz to check for understanding. We will continue by watching Study Jams Sound. The new words we will add vibration, frequency, decibels, hertz, and echo. Quick quiz time again. Students then will do stations that deal with vibrations, decibels, and frequency. Slinky model and sound waves and pitch.... long gong.... tuning fork in water. We will wrap up with all the words while showing the amplifier.

4th graders- we will continue to learn about the solar system. We are finishing up on what we learned about the Earth, Sun, and Moon. We are working on fact building with stations. We are using a matching activity from the Science Penguin, then a quick quiz to see what they remember.

After they are done with a quick review...we are working on the concept of cycles around us. Tides, seasons, day and night, and lunar cycles. We are finishing up with this great rap and start of the lunar model using Oreos and this great free download from Balancing Everything.

Fifth graders: Oh, My, Gosh...I am so excited about their cardboard arcade games. We started them this last week for about 10 minutes of supply getting. Some groups are already almost done. These games will be played at our Title 1 night: Hmong Heritage Celebration and 5th Grade Cardboard Arcade. The game with the most tickets gets featured at our school carnival that weekend! When students are done with their game, they are working on the past, present, future lesson in the Cardboard Arcade Simple Machines Unit. I love this unit! We did the scavenger hunt and vocabulary matching. The kids were completely engaged in the activity! They now are understanding simple machines even better!

Have a great weekend!

Our Finished Food Chain Art Project