The Last Hurrah with Our Mealworms!

Or should I say with our darkling beetles!  Yes, our mealworms have grown up and we are moving on!  It will be hard saying goodbye, but we can always check on how they are doing next year!

Holding on!

Head down, feet up!

They are so good at holding on!

They are so fast!

The beetle tickles when it walks!

Hi there!

Look!  My beetle doesn't fall when it's upside down!

2nd Grade Screens River Rocks!

Second graders have been investigating what happens when screens are used with a river rock mixture!

Right away we noticed that the rock mixture
has rocks of different sizes.

We also noticed that the rocks are different
colors.

The classes explored with three different sized screens and thought about what happened to the rock mixture when they used the screens.

Some of the rocks can be pushed through the screen.

Writing down observations.

One rock is stuck in the screen!

Then they experimented with the screens.  What happens with the rock mixture when it is poured through all three screens at the same time?

Most of us came to the same conclusion - The big rocks didn't go through any of the screens, the medium rocks stayed on the medium screen, the small rocks stayed on top of the small screen and the smallest rocks went through all four screens!

Pre-K Dig for Fossils and Dinosaur Bones!

Pre-K have been paleontologists for the past few weeks!  They have been digging for fossils.  At first we weren't sure exactly what a fossil was, but then we read that fossils are the remains of plants and animals that lived long ago.  
We looked at real fossils!

We tried to identify what type of fossil we were looking at.

We drew a picture of the fossil in our fossil book.

Now to dig for our own fossils!

The goggles keep the sand out of our eyes!

Digging for fossils.

Look what I found!

Are there any fossils left?

We're making our own fossils with play dough.

I made so many.

I'm hiding this one.

Building with dinosaurs

Dinosaur families.

A BIG dinosaur floor puzzle.

These dinosaur bones were a little harder to figure out.  It was like a puzzle! The bones were T-Rex and Triceratops bones.  And we had a new tool...a brush to gently move the sand away from our dinosaur bones.

Oh these goggles!

Look at all the footprints!

Dinosaur tracks.

Free World Science Festival on Sunday!

This Sunday at the Park Slope Armory is an awesome science event!  I went last year to a World Science Festival at Brooklyn Bridge Park and was amazed at all the cool exhibitions, events and hands on activities that were offered for both young and old!  I highly recommend going if you are looking for something to do!

Gardening with Kindergarteners!

It has been a wonderful three months gardening with the kindergarteners!  We started our curriculum when it was warm and the plants were still growing and producing vegetables.  Now we have had our last class and the garden has been put to bed!

With the garden in this resting state, our last two classes were spent looking at and drawing a special spot in the garden that reminds us of fall and....

One small flower still growing!

This raised bed looks like fall...there are no plants.

The leaves in the garden are fall.

 

No plants here!  Just fall leaves.

 ...looking at what is in the soil in our raised beds! It is important for our plants to have good soil so it can grow!

We found little rocks.

There are leaves and pieces of wood in the dirt.

Rubbing the soil on our paper.

We found a burrowing spider!

Is that a worm?

Roots!