Little Scientists!

Whew! What a whirlwind these past few weeks have been!  I met my new kinder kids -  & boy let me tell you, they are super, super sweet!  (Full of energy, but still, SUPER sweet! :) )

We are finally getting the hang of centers, we started our "reading" groups, and we are learning math stations.  I've been so inspired by all of you in blog land that I'm going against all I believe in (student choice, and all...) and trying Debbie Diller's Math Stations.  We're going to explore this week, and try for "real" next.  To say I'm nervous would be a HUGE understatement!  But, we'll see...

In addition to learning rules, routines, and basically how to be in kindergarten (which is oh so very different from pre-k, remember! lol!!), we've learned how to be little scientists!

I was inspired by the posts over at KindergartenKindergarten  I really want to focus on teaching them how to BE a scientist this year - we may "do" science, but I wanted them to fully understand just what science is!

So... we had our first experience with science last Thursday.  We learned how to use the scientific method (from Deanna Jump's super book @ TpT  Then, I decided we could learn about what a mixture was! HAHAHA!  No really, it was okay - we had a blast.  I wanted them to really understand what a mixture was because this week we started learning how to sort.  I was able to relate sorting to mixtures because they already had that background knowledge.  And... today during Stand Up Hand Up Pair Up, a student actually said that sorting was when you separate a mixture. SCORE!!!!!! :)

Okay, so to understand mixtures we made our own discovery bottles.  There are TONS of resources online for how to make discovery bottles, but for this, I just let the kids go c-raaaay-zy!  We talked about how mixtures could be objects (like jumbled up toys), liquids (like oil & water), or both (like vegetable soup!)  And then, we made our own discovery bottles - fun, fun, fun!

Here's a picture of one that a student made - he used vegetable oil, karo syrup, green food coloring, and beads.  

I let the kiddles choose 2 liquids and a "solid"... and well, of course a little glitter. Duh!  I wanted to take lots of pictures, but I don't have an assistant and this was totally hands on for me! lol.  I'm a total control freak, and I can't believe I actually let them pour some of the liquids... THEY were the scientists, so of course I had to. :)

To help the school to home connection, I made this experiment description sheet for the kiddies to take home and explain what we did to the mommies and daddies.  If you want to do the mixture bottle activity with your friends, download the info sheet HERE.

I also made cutesy little labels to go on their discovery bottles - you can get them HERE. (Let me know if the labels don't print right... I think they got messed up converting them to a pdf file!)  Just print and write their names in the open space, then stick to the discovery bottle.

So... this week we are learning about our 5 senses.  On Friday we will be experimenting with our sense of taste.  I made an experiment description sheet for that too.  Get it HERE.

Happy Science-ing!!!! :)