Sunday, December 15, 2013

Ohio wild animal research & projects

We spent the week continuing to research our four Ohio wild animals using videos and documentaries. Each group made plans for what they wanted to learn about their animal, how they were going to document their learning and how they wanted to share their learning with others. Some of the ways the groups chose to document their learning were to make a poster, movie, and a big book. They also wanted to make the animals and their habitats (see pictures below). We have also been working on writing non-fiction books about our animals to share at our open house. We have looked at different non-fiction books and discussed what elements they include such as maps, diagrams, headings, facts, pictures, etc. 

Here is a picture of the documentary we watched on snakes that showed that they have a tube in their mouths which help them breathe while they are swallowing. The students were very interested in this!! 
We have been having each group come up and share with the class facts that they have been learning about their animals. The kids enjoyed hearing the facts about the other animals as well! 
One of the groups watching a video/documentary on the ipad. 
We enjoyed continuing to observe the animal pelts before passing them on to Mrs. Atkin's class for them to study. The children enjoyed observing these different Ohio animals up close. In the bottom left picture, Alivia & Shelby were enjoying finding the whiskers on the different animals. 
The picture is a little bit blurry but the kids were so excited that we were finally able to see deer on our web cam this week! 
In the groups plans they wanted to make their animals and we decided that using clay would be the best way to do that so we started them this week. The children will paint them this week and add details in order to finish them up.
Here is Sebastian's snake he made and was very proud of!
The children used our non fiction books as a guide to what their animal looked like and how to make them appropriately. Here are some of our finished animals.
This week Mr. Garrabrant came to talk to our class about being an engineer. He discussed the engineering design process and the different reasons you might use it. The children asked him questions and got a little inspiration for creating our projects in the future. 
We also started this new activity where Swiper (from Dora) has been "stealing" numbers from our hundreds chart. Every day we have to look at the chart and try to figure out which numbers he has stolen that day. The kids are really loving it so far and it has been allowing us to practicing recognizing our numbers as well as counting!
Each group also made a plan on how they wanted to make their animal habitat as well. Here we were painting the dead grass for our deer habitat.
This group was painting their rabbit habitat with grass on top and dirt inside the box since rabbits burrow underground.
This group was painting their foxes den with grass on the backside and the tree on the front. We will still add the tree trunk on top and rocks/other materials to make it look more like a den.
We will continue to add more details and finish up our projects this week! The kids are very excited to put all of their great ideas into action!
We will be having our Ohio Wild Animal open house this coming Friday morning, December 20th from 8:15-9:00am. We hope to see you all there! The children are excited to share their hard work with you all! Have a great week!

Mrs. Brittany Garrabrant

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