Our wonderful children have picked up right back from where we left off, before the holidays! Remember our project that started about snakes? Here are two links in case you forgot.....
It is amazing how the projects develop and how much the children are learning when they are excited and interested in the subjects! Noah's parents have seen his interest in snakes and reptiles since the projects, so for his birthday, they brought a reptile show to the school!
Stay tuned for a slide show of the party! You will be so surprised at all the animals the kids saw, and how they were able to handle the animals.
As we started talking about reptiles, the children started talking about different animals. One of their favorites at the moment is frogs! We are learning about the life cycle of the frog, and how the frog goes from living in the water as a tadpole, to a frog on land. We have learned about how a frog eats, and what it eats, and so much more! Take a look at some of our drawings below, notice the detail in the drawings and how advanced their art is for their age!
Here is the life cycle, by Ashley
Alexandre made a long tongue to show how the frog gets his food! He said, "Frogs stick on lily pads and they have sticky toes to climb on trees!"
Notice the feet on this frog! Ashley did this to show that the toes are sticky! This turned into a great math project, we counted how many toes she gave the frog, and found out that frogs only have 5 toes, so now we are redoing a picture with 5 toes!
Here is the frog life cycle and a picture of a frog by Kailyn M.
Trevor drew the lifecycle of a frog
We can all see that Kaelynn made this picture!
Ricky drew this lifecycle!We are making more snakes, and here is a sneak peak of some of our creations! We are counting how many spots, lines, and materials we are using to make our snakes, we are measuring them and seeing who's is longer and shorter. We are in the process of making a "chart" in our class to see how many inches each person's snake is.
We have bee working on playing "games" in class where we look at animals and determine whether it is a reptile or a mammal! We are making mammals and reptiles out of clay and categorizing them. Look at this tiger, "which is a mammal"! ;0)
This project is going in so many different directions! Some children have started a project on the frogs in the rain forest, frogs vs toads, and what is an amphibian. This is helping us learn about the environment of a rain forest, what amphibians need in their environment to live, and the anatomy of frogs.
(don't tell anyone, its a secret, but we are expecting a delivery of two bullfrog tadpoles in the mail any day now!)
This is going to really help our project take off even more!
We have been having such wonderful conversations about mammals vs reptiles:
We saw a picture of a snake and the children said, "He's a reptile!" "He is sticky!"
We asked, "Do snakes lay eggs or carry their babies in their tummies?"
Trevor said, "They lay eggs!"
We asked, "Do people lay eggs or carry their babies in their tummies?"
One child said, "lay eggs!" So we said, "When you were all babies and your mom was ready to have you, did she go make a nest and put an egg in it? Did you come out of an egg?"
"NNNOOOOO!" "We came out of our mommies tummies!"
But Will said, "I came out of my daddy's tummy!" ;0) (love that!)
Ricky said, "And I came out of my mommy's tummy and then I drank milk from her tummy!"
We asked, "So are people mammals, reptiles, or amphibians?"
They all started saying "A person!" But then Ashley said, "A mammal!"
We looked at a picture of a lizard, "Do lizards lay eggs or carry their babies in their tummies"
"They lay eggs!" So are they a mammal or a reptile? "A reptile!"
We continued the conversation about other animals like giraffes and crocodiles, and we talked about whether the animal laid eggs or not, and whether the animal drank milk from its mother, or if the mother found food for the baby animal.
So much is going on, it is hard to put it all in this post! We are enjoying every minute of this project especially since the children are enjoying and learning so much!
