All about life

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For students to be successful in the science curriculum, they must study science through “hands-on” experiences. I use their past experiences as well as present experiences that I help to create to teach the curriculum. Many children today have never climbed a tree, walked in the woods, or waded in a stream, and I think that is sad. When they have the opportunity to see and touch the natural world, they become excited about it, and I use that excitement to teach all areas of the kindergarten curriculum, not just science.

The science table

Our “Science Discovery Table” is the center of our classroom. What can you find on it? You can find skulls (horse, deer, dog, opossum), teeth, gourds, leaves, seed pods, bird nests, eggs (song birds, emu), egg cases (skate, praying mantis, spider, conch), feathers (turkey, chicken, peacock, song birds), rocks, shells (crab, scallop, conch, clam, pin), snake skins, living plants (in water, in dirt), dried plants, sealed Petri dishes (bat, butterflies, moths, beetles, spiders, various insects), plastic protective glasses, magnifying glasses, and microscopes.

Can we classify all the different specimens on the science table? No, but we try. Students look in various field guides to try to identify the rocks, leaves, birds, and insects. They get books from the library. They ask other people to help them. They compare the pictures to the specimens. They work together to explain why this specimen is a moth and not a butterfly. They talk about how many body parts it has, what they think each part is/was used for, how the specimen moved, where it lived, what it ate, and whether it was helpful to humans or destructive. It is by listening to the students talk and asking questions that I plan appropriate activities and choose the books I will read to them about a specific plant or animal.

Does the science table stay the same day after day? No! Students continually bring in new items for the table. It is wonderful to hear them explain what they brought in. Some can remember what their parents have told them, others cannot. Sometimes the parent may not have known, and we look it up together. At the beginning of the school year, I inform my parents that each child has a specific day each week to share something with the class. Students may tell about something they did or they may bring in an object from nature to share with the class. During the fourth nine weeks of school, the share is brought to school in a bag with three clues. The student shares one clue and three students get to guess. This process is repeated until all clues are given or someone guesses correctly. Many students bring in objects that go along with the unit/theme that we are studying.

We also use live specimens in the classroom. At present, we have a fourteen-year-old pond slider, anoles, and Madagascar Hissing Roaches. Live specimens are brought in by the students and the teachers. If possible, we create a habitat so we can observe the specimen. If it is not possible to create a habitat, we keep the specimen only a day or two, then return it to its original habitat. We have had box turtles, eastern fence lizards, a hedgehog, caterpillars, katydids, black-and-yellow argiopes, crickets, frogs, toads, grasshoppers, and a hellbender.

I measure the success of my science curriculum by the students’ day-to-day interest in their Science Discovery Table, by their interest in the things they bring in for the table, and by the interest that my former students still have for the Science Discovery Table. Former students come by to see what we have on the table, to bring specimens for the table, and to tell me about what they are studying in their classroom. The most important thing they tell me is that in kindergarten, science was fun!

Exploring the seasons

On a Saturday afternoon in August, my class has a picnic at a park, where we play in a creek. I furnish the nets, catch boxes, identification guides, and moral support to the students and their parents. Students and parents bring “water shoes” so they can explore the creek together. We have fun catching crayfish, minnows, water spiders, and any other unlucky creature. It is amazing what we can catch with twenty-two students, their siblings, and their parents in the creek at the same time. We also explore the creek bank, the edge of the woods, and the open field. We gather specimens from all of the habitats. Usually, we take a few specimens back to the classroom and keep them for a week. Then I or a student or parent return them to the creek and release them.

Bugs! Watching “creepy crawlies” is a valuable learning experience, and they don’t take up as much space as mammals or reptiles.

Each fall, my class observes caterpillars (butterfly and moth) as they consume an enormous amount of leaves and make their cocoons or turn into chrysalises. Once we were fortunate to watch the caterpillars hatch from the eggs and to follow their complete life cycle. During the year, the children watch the holding cage until finally in the spring we see the butterfly or moth emerge. After three days, we release them. We have even seen parasitic wasps emerge. The students were very upset, but we studied how and why this happened. We were still disappointed, but no longer angry.

Throughout the year, our class uses the playground and school grounds as a science laboratory. We gain a better understanding of how and why habitats are alike and different. We go on spider and spider web walks. We look for ants, grasshoppers, ladybugs, crickets, and worms. We observe bees in our four-by-eight-foot garden plot. We talk about which insects and critters help our garden to be healthy and which ones can make it sick. We look for bird nests in trees, under eaves, and in our bluebird boxes. Our school has a nature trail. We go on the trail looking for the same things we do on the playground. We talk about the different kinds of things we find in the woods versus the grass. We check the rotting logs to see what we can find. We look at the growths on the trees and on the ground where it is shady. We compare the woods habitat to the playground habitat. The school’s butterfly garden is a wonderful laboratory of colors, smells, and all types of insects.

Each spring, we do a four-week embryology unit. We hatch chicks. The students learn all about what it takes to be a good mother hen. They turn the eggs twice a day. Students learn the difference between fertile eggs and unfertile eggs. We prepare eggs many different ways for eating (boiled, fried, curried, purple pickled, scrambled, deviled, and in French toast). We make a graph about the eggs we liked or didn’t like. On the twenty-first day, students take turns sitting next to the incubator and peeping to encourage the chicks to keep working hard. We keep the chicks for approximately two weeks after they hatch. We watch the development of their feathers. We chart their growth. Most of the time, a family will take the chickens to raise. We have had one of our classroom roosters entered into the State Fair, and he won first prize. (For information on where to get chicks, see Resources, below.)

Off-campus field trips are also an important part of my science curriculum. With the help of many parent volunteers, I take the students to the North Carolina State Fair to see animal barns, agricultural exhibits, forestry exhibits, the North Carolina Wildlife exhibit, and the Village of Yesteryear; to the Museum of Life and Science in Durham to see the Butterfly House, the Tree House adventure, and exhibits about rocks and minerals, animals, and space; to the North Carolina Zoo to learn about habitats, how insects help animals, and respect for the snakes and bugs crossing our path; and to Duke Gardens to learn about habitats and interdependence of plants and animals.

In all of our activities, we discuss how plants and animals need the same things to survive — food, shelter, and air. We learn why we need to protect our environment and how we can do that. We share our knowledge with our families. We learn to recycle and not pollute our environment. This year, all three kindergarten classes are doing an Earth Day program for our families. The program will be held at night so more family members can come.

Science integration

Our science activities are integrated with the reading, writing, and math curricula. When the class returns from a field trip, each student writes or dictates a story about what he or she saw and illustrates it. As the year goes on, they are able to write more and more of their stories themselves. These stories are made into a book, and each student gets a copy of the book to take home. The students also draw pictures about what they see on our nature walks and write three sentences about them or ask the teacher to write their sentences for them.

To help us learn math, the class keeps a group data chart on when we get a caterpillar, what it eats, when it makes a chrysalis, and when it emerges. The class also keeps growth charts of the seeds that we plant in the classroom and in our garden plot.

I read to the class for a minimum of thirty minutes a day. Most of my reading is related to science, and every unit or theme I use has science-related literature. Starting the first day of school, students take home a “book in the bag” to be read to them by their parents and returned to school the next day. In January the “book in the bag” is a Wright Group science book. These books inspire natural curiosity. Many of the books have simple experiments for the parent and student to do together. There are three books on each topic, each on a different reading level.

I also use computer programs to enrich my science program. I use Sammy’s Science House, The Incredible Amazing Dictionary, Kid Pix, and teacher-formatted Hyper Studio stacks that ask students to match the body part to the correct insect, sort living and nonliving objects, or sort by habitat.

Resources for my classroom

Videos

The Missouri Botanical Garden Videos are a series of six programs on different ecological habitats. These videos show that science is the process of investigation and discovery. The children are asked to use all of their senses as they explore the world around them. The programs are short, only eleven to fourteen minutes each. They focus on a number of important science concepts, not on science terminology. “The Secret of the Pond” takes a field trip to a pond to investigate the plant and animal life in the pond habitat. We do not have a pond or creek on our school grounds, so I bring in creek water, pond water, and lake water for us to explore with our microscopes. In “The Puzzle of the Rotting Log,” a group of children takes a field trip to a forest, where they investigate a rotting log. The children are introduced to decomposition — an important ecological process. Our class explores a rotting log on the school Nature Trail. We also brought part of a rotting log into the classroom to explore. The videos are available from MBG Video, 2025 S. Brentwood Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63144, (800) 927-9229.

Kid-level research: Kindergarten students can use this Intel microscope to explore the natural world.

Microscopes

We have several microscopes in our classroom, including a dissecting microscope. We also have a computer microscope designed especially for children, the Intel^R Play^TM Q3^TM Computer Microscope. It connects to a PC, and instead of having to look through the microscope, a child can see the object magnified on the computer monitor. The image is auto-focused, because focusing a microscope can be difficult for children. The students can take “snapshots” of the objects they are looking at and save them on the computer.

Experts

Local county 4-H offices will work with teachers on many different science topics. I get my eggs from them at no cost. (You can buy eggs from North Carolina State University Veterinary School. Get them any age you want — a week old or 20 days old.) Also, they will give teachers one copy of materials to teach units and materials that the teacher can copy for students. 4-H agents will even come and teach classes to your children. They are a wonderful free resource that teachers should use!

Don’t forget about other state agencies. The North Carolina Forestry Service will give teachers materials if they attend workshops. They will come into your class and teach special projects at no cost, but you have to be flexible because of the rangers’ schedules. N.C. Wildlife rangers will also come to schools and present programs at no cost.

Books

The first book I read to my students at the beginning of the year is the Sierra Club’s My First Nature Treasury. It lays the foundation for the complete kindergarten science program! This book is read to my class in small groups of five or six children. One section is read at a time, and the students discuss what has been read, what they knew, what they have learned, and what they want to learn more about.

Other books I read to my students include:

• Amazing Spiders (Alexandra Parsons)
• Animals Grow (Colin Walker)
• Ant Cities (Arthur Dorros)
• Armies of Ants (Walter Retan)
• Backyard Insects (Millicent Selsam and R. Goor)
• Beast Feast (Douglas Florian)
• Bees (A First Discovery Book)
• Butterflies and Moths (A Golden Guide)
• Butterflies and Moths (Barron’s)
• Crabby’s Water Wish (Suzanne Tate)
• Creepy Crawly Baby Bugs (Sandra Markle)
• Fishes (A Golden Guide)
• A Flea Story (Leo Lionni)
• Flowers (A Golden Guide)
• Gnat (Andrienne Soutter-Perrot)
• Harry Horseshoe Crab (Suzanne Tate)
• The Icky Bug Alphabet Book (Jerry Pallotta)
• I’m a Caterpillar (Jean Marzollo)
• Insects (A Golden Guide)
• The Itsy Bitsy Spider (Iza Trapani)
• The Lamb and the Butterfly (Arnold Sundgard)
• Life in the Meadow (Eileen Curran)
• Look Closer (Brian and Rebecca Wildsmith)
• Look, a Butterfly (David Cutts)
• Melody’s Mystery (Diane and Bob Harvey)
• My Five Senses (Aliki)
• Pond Life (A Golden Guide)
• The Reason for a Flower (Ruth Heller)
• Reptiles and Amphibians (A Golden Guide)
• Rocks and Minerals (A Golden Guide)
• Sammy Shrimp (Suzanne Tate)
• Spiders and Their Kin (A Golden Guide)
• Tracks in the Sand (Ann Goodale)
• Trees (A Golden Guide)
• What’s Inside Small Animals? (Angela Royston)
• Where’s That Insect? (B. Brenner and B. Chardit)

Wright Science Group science books for “book in the bag” reading include the following:

• How Machines Help
• Cutting Machines
• Machines
• How Spiders Live
• Spiders and Their Webs
• Spiders Are Special Animals
• What Is This Skeleton?
• Our Skeleton Broken Bones
• What Makes Light?
• How Can We See in the Dark?
• Flashlights
• Is It Floating?
• Floating and Sinking
• What Will Float?
• Ants, Ants, Ants
• Ants
• How Ants Live
• Seeds, Seeds, Seeds
• Seeds Grow
• Plants and Seeds
• Fibers Made by People
• Fibers from Plants
• Animal Fibers
• A Bean
• A Spider
• An Apple
• What Is Space?
• Earth and Moon
• Exploring Space
• Eggs and Baby Birds
• Feathers and Flight
• How Birds Live
• Teeth
• You and Your Teeth
• Animals and Their Teeth
• What Is a Fly?
• How Flies Live
• Eggs, Larvae, and Flies
• Hot and Cold
• Weather
• Wind and Storms
• Clouds, Rain, and Fog
• The Survival of Fish
• How Do Fish Live?
• Is It a Fish?
• Getting Cold!
• Getting Hot!
• Warming Up!
• Cooling Off!
• Keeping Warm!
• Keeping Cool!
• Wonderful Eyes
• Wonderful Ears
• Our Eyes
• An Egg
• A Ball of Wool
• A Juice Bar