My first-grade science classes traditionally went on a leaf hunt to learn how to identify the leaves (trees) around our school campus. Click here to see the leaves we investigated before we searched for them around our grounds. Create a scavenger hunt to identify the leaves that grow on the trees around you.
Click here to view full screen. A fun parody to dramatize!
Learn to identify leaves with Fall Walk too.
When I was growing up in Kentucky, my family visited Mammoth Cave and when I was teaching science, I chaperoned field trips to the Dahlonega Gold Mines. Click here for further information and photos of this field trip.
Because my husband and I couldn’t continue our journey to Glacier National Park, we explored some sights near Bozeman, Montana. One of those day trips led us to Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park.
The Lewis and Clark Caverns, Montana’s first state park, became federal property in 1908. Although they never entered the caverns, the park was named after Meriwether Lewis and William Clark whose expedition passed through the area as they explored the western portion of the United States after the Louisiana Purchase. These caverns are unique because they are high in the mountains.
What is the difference between a cave and a cavern? Caverns consist of a series of caves connected with one passage, while caves tend to consist of only one hollow.
We hiked to the entrance of the caverns. Although the outside temperature was nearly 80 degrees, the temperature remains approximately 48 degrees Fahrenheit inside the caverns.
The cathedral room was spectacular! The most common features were dripstone (soda straws, stalagmites, stalactites, and columns); flowstone (canopies, waterfalls, and cave bacon); and seepstone (cave popcorn and helicities).
I was hoping to see the resident Townsend’s big eared bats, but no luck on this visit.
Click here to view full screen.
Click here for full screen viewing.
We had fun spelunking!
Click here for full screen. Try this experiment:
The following humorous story can be used to teach prediction and persusaion, as well as the danger of making assumptions.
Click here to watch full screen.
Construct a cave inside or outside like the children do in the following story. What materials could you use-boxes, bed sheets…? Young children will enjoy the repetitive language in this imaginative text.
To watch full screen, click here.
Look at what this teacher did to transform her hallway and classroom! Crumbled brown paper makes it appear as though you are inside caverns. Use a cave unit to kick off a study of bats or bears. If you want to integrate art into a cave unit, make cave paintings
Photo credit: wwv.group.com
When my husband and I were in Yellowstone and the surrounding areas, we were frequently reminded that encountering grizzly bears was a real possibility and warned not to hike without bear spray.
I saw two bears from a distance but was unable to photograph them. These photos were captured by my friends, Susan and Ted, who live in Montana.
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Felt as if I was on a bear hunt which reminded me of one of my favorite children ‘s books. This story is easily dramatized and it’s always fun to add sound effects using your body, common objects, or instruments. Use this book as an engaging way to teach positional words (under, over, and through) as well as descriptive words (long and wavy), and onomatopoeia (sound words). I have made a map of this story on a long sheet of bulletin board paper with prior classes to introduce map skills and to retell and sequence the events.
Click here for the Safeshare link. (Slightly different version). Click here to watch full screen.
Click here for the Safeshare link. Click here to watch full screen.
Note: We were told to never run from a grizzly bear!
Click here to check out Fat Bear Week 2022. Click here to watch the bears live.
I discovered these holes in the leaves below when I returned home from vacation. I assume an insect made them, but I don’t know of any that leave a pattern like this. Also, do you notice how the leaf has turned red around each hole, almost as if it is bleeding?
Maybe it was the very hungry caterpillar! Click here for Safeshare.
As I stated in a previous post, I will be sharing some leaf-themed posts as autumn approaches. The edge of a leaf is called the margin. Some leaves, mostly round or oval leaves, are even and smooth around the entire leaf edge and are referred to as entire leaves. Magnolia leaves and dogwood are familiar examples.
Other leaves are serrated or toothed. A serrated leaf has pointed teeth, like a saw, around the entire leaf edge. The serrated teeth angle up toward the tip of the leaf.
A lobed leaf has curved or rounded projections. Maple, tulip, sweetgum, and oak leaves are examples of lobed leaves.
Collect leaves and classify them according to the categories above.
As you study leaves, be sure to include the picture book, Leaf Man, by Lois Ehert. It is such a creative and engaging way to identify leaves while observing their shapes colors, sizes, venation, and margins.
Click here to view full screen.
This lovely picture book inspired me to create leaf creatures. I pressed leaves last fall by placing them between packing paper (white issue paper, paper towels. or parchment paper will work too) and placing heavy books on top of the paper. I was pleased to see the leaves held their color. It isn’t necessary to press the leaves you collect for that length of time before you work with them. Glue your creations on paper or place them behind glass in a frame. I would have either a printed image or an electronic image of an animal of choice for children to use as a reference when they create their leaf creatures.
Click here to use symmetry to learn about the margins of leaves.
Click here for more details about another fun project I did with leaves last fall.
Collect deciduous leaves that have revealed their fall colors with your children or students. Draw vases of their own design with chalk on a sidewalk. Place the leaves in the vase.
Do you want more leaf experiments? Search in the upper right corner above with key words leaf, tree, or fall.
I’ve posted about joro spiders before. Click here to go to that post. These arachnids are spreading all over Georgia and other neighboring states. I began seeing small spiders in early summer, but they are quickly growing to their three-inch size. Joro spiders, an invasive species originating from tropical parts of Asia, are “cousins” of the golden silk spider (banana spider) which is common in the southeastern United States.
Joro spiders are easy to identify. Their long legs and abdomens have yellow and black stripes, and a red mark is located on the underside of the female’s abdomen.
These spiders weave giant golden 3-D orb webs that can span 10 feet. The precision and design of an orb web is one of the most beautiful sights in nature!
Grateful that their bite cannot harm people or pets. After females lay their egg sacs in late summer, they will die at the first frost. Four to five hundred spiderlings will hatch next spring. Joro spiders travel via ballooning, meaning they use their silk to ride air currents. Could this explain how the Joro spider population has spread so quickly?
I’m starting to spot male spiders, smaller and less colorful than the females, in the webs.
Just added this book to my library.
The construction of orb webs fascinates me, and I’ve posted about them several times. Click here to see orb webs one foggy morning and click here to see a web in a window. You can spray orb webs with a fine mist to see the details of the webs. Gently throw a leaf into the web and watch how the spider interacts with it.
The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle is a fun story to dramatize with your young scientists. Give the actor who is the spider a ball of yarn to weave among items in your classroom or purchase a large orb web to use as the background. (Click here for an example.)
Click here to view full screen.
Students can make orb webs in a variety of ways. Create an orb web on waxed paper with glue. Let it dry and then peel it off. My students have also created webs with glue and while the glue was wet, they sprinkled glitter over them. (They look like webs glistening with water droplets.) We added a spider after the glue dried. Drawing webs is always an engaging task! Click here.
I’ve used the study of spiders to teach students to differentiate between facts and opinions in reading. Lots of people have opinions about spiders! Ideas from former students:
Facts:
Spiders are invertebrates. Most spiders spin webs. Spiders have eight legs and two body parts. Most spiders have eight eyes. There are different kinds of webs.
Opinions:
Everyone should study spiders. Spiders are the coolest! Spiders are scary. Spiders are fun to study. Orb webs are the best kind of webs.
Surely everyone has experienced a mosquito bite. Did you know that mosquitoes are considered the deadliest animal in the world? Click here to watch an informative video about mosquitoes.
A mosquito is an insect and therefore has three body parts and six legs. During their life span, mosquitoes move through metamorphosis – egg. larva, pupa, and adult. I like to walk in a wetland, but I’ve limited my walks there this summer because of the stagnant pools of water where mosquitoes lay their eggs.
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Although mosquitoes are certainly not a favorite of mine, they are an important link in many food chains. Predators that eat mosquitoes include fish, birds, bats and frogs. Some species of mosquitoes are pollinators.
Click here to watch this humorous story full screen.
Add the West African tale, Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears, to your study of mosquitoes.
I recently posted about honeybees, but how do they differ from bumblebees? Although they are both insects with six legs and three body parts, there are many differences between the two species.
Honeybees are domesticated and produce honey, while bumblebees are always wild and produce a minimal amount of honey. The bumblebee body is large, round and furry while the honeybee is much thinner, and its four wings are distinct. Most bumblebee species prefer to make hives underground and the colony is smaller than the above ground hives of the honeybee. A bumblebee can sting multiple times, unlike a honeybee that can only sting once. Only the queen bumblebee will survive the winter, but the honeybee colony will remain intact through the winter months.
Look at those compound eyes! See previous post about insect eyes.
There are more species of bumblebees than honeybees, and of the two groups, they are the better pollinators. Using your knowledge of their bodies, why do you think this is true? Observe bumblebees at work.
Click here to view full screen.
In a past lab, we pretended to be pollinators. Sugar water (nectar) was in the cup and “pollen” rubbed off the Cheetos (stamens) onto our hands, like it does on a bee’s legs. The straw was our long tongue that we inserted inside the flower.
An informative book to add to your collection:
What an ideal time to listen to the Flight of the Bumblebee by Rimsky-Korsakov. Click here to watch full screen. Use this as a movement activity and dramatize pollinating flowers with your young scientists.
Why is there such a fuss about honeybees by environmentalists? What is their role in the ecosystem?
Honeybees are social insects. They are invertebrates and further classified as arthropods. In the colony, the queen, drones (males) and workers (females) each have a role. Click here to learn more.
Honeybees, like other insects, move through metamorphosis (egg, larva, pupa, and adult) during their life cycle.
Love this series!
Click here for full screen.
Click here for full screen viewing.
Watch the video below to learn how bees make honey and then have a honey tasting party with your students. Create a graph of favorites.
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Visit a garden and watch honeybees at work. Ask a beekeeper to visit your classroom.
This is an ideal opportunity to connect math and science and learn about hexagons with equal sides (a regular polygon). A hexagon is a polygon which is a two-dimensional, closed shaped with three or more straight sides. Both the words six and hexagon have an “x” as their third letter. Hexagons have six sides, vertices, and angles.
Which shape is made when a hexagon is cut in half? (trapezoid) Which shape do you see when a hexagon is divided into sixths? (triangle) Three rhombuses (rhombi) also form a hexagon. Pull out your pattern blocks and explore these shapes. This activity is a hands-on introduction to fractions.
How many different ways can you cover a hexagon with these shapes? Use this activity to move into a discussion of equivalent fractions.
Use popsicle sticks or toothpicks to form the hexagonal cells in a honeycomb (tessellation). Little fingers will find this challenging.
Where else in nature do you find hexagons? Click here for full screen.
Check out these books too:
Do you know how to distinguish between a butterfly and a moth? Although there are similarities, there are also striking differences.
Moths are nocturnal while butterflies are active during the day (diurnal). Moths usually have plain wings, and butterfly wings tend to be more colorful. When a moth is resting, its wings are at its sides, but a butterfly rests with its wings together and upright. There are differences in antennae too. A butterfly has clubbed antennae, but a moth has straight or feathery ones. Finally, a butterfly’s body is thin, but a moth’s body is often thicker. During metamorphosis, a butterfly caterpillar makes a chrysalis, but a moth caterpillar forms a cocoon during the pupal stage. Now when you find a lepidoptera on a walk with your child or students, determine whether it is a moth or butterfly.
Click here for full screen.
Click here to watch full screen.
Click here to learn how to watch caterpillars move through metamorphosis. Click here for a previous cocoon post. I have made other posts about butterflies and moths. Go to the search bar on the right top corner of the home page to find them.
Observe butterflies in a garden or nursery. Turn on a light outside at night and watch for moths.