This month WeAreTeachers is teaming with Highscope for our “Making a Difference” early childhood education microgrant. We are asking teachers to give us their best ideas for making a difference, big or small, in the educational futures of their students. It takes less than five minutes to apply and the winners will take away $200 and a Flip Video camera or iPod nano with video to capture the implementation of their project. Interested? Apply here.
1. Talk to the class about spring changes they are noticing outdoors. Have each child take a magnifying glass outside to find signs of spring such as buds, ants crawling, bulb shoots, green leaves, and flower buds. Back in the classroom have the group create a list of the things they saw. Repeat the activity, this time having children take clipboards outside to “write about” or draw what they saw.
2. Start a ladybug habitat outside your school.
3. Go on a post-rain walk and look for puddles to jump over.
4. Go on a Creature and Critter Hunt! Give children spoons or small shovels to take outside and ask them to dig in the dirt and look for “creatures and critters.” Collect the creatures in clear plastic containers to observe later.
5. Create chalk art. Take sidewalk chalk outside to draw on paved areas. Provide water to dip the chalk into, and encourage children to compare the differences in the colors when using chalk with or without water.
6. Break out the bubbles! Take bubble solution outside in dish tubs and experiment with different types of bubble wands such as fly swatters, paper towel tubes, and pipe cleaners.
7. Watch the grass grow. Grow grass in your sensory table or in large planters. Because it grows fast, it’s fun to watch the changes. Children can use scissors to clip the grass or measure the growth with rulers or unconventional units.
8. Sing the “The Garden Song” by David Mallett (it starts, “Inch by inch, Row by row”). Sing it again, this time asking children to pretend to grow from a seed to a plant as they sing. Ask children for ideas about what kinds of plants they want to be, for example, tomatoes, corn, roses, tulips.
9. Go on a Natural Treasure Hunt. Give each person a paper lunch bag. Go outside and take a walk, with everyone collecting the interesting objects they find in their bag. Back indoors, everyone dumps out the contents of their bag, looks at and talk about the items, possibly sorting and comparing them with others. If children sort items into categories, have them count and graph the number in each category using a tally system.
10. Create a series of spring photos. Watch a tree as it changes from winter to spring. Document the changes with a digital camera. Make a numbered sequence chart of the pictures, illustrating the changes in the order they occurred. The same activity may be done with a flower bed, a flowering bush, melting snow banks, or any other changing item.
11. Grow a birdseed garden.
12. Try fence weaving. Take pieces of ribbon, yarn, crepe paper, or colored paper strips outdoors to weave on a chain length or slotted fence. Look for patterns.
13. Explore seeds. Give children a variety of seeds with different characteristics and sizes (e.g., large bean seeds, small marigold seeds) and encourage children to notice and compare the differences. Plant the seeds in their own individual containers and see what grows from each kind of seed. Talk about what plants need to grow (water, sunlight, etc.).
14. Create an outdoor listening lab. Hang various wind chimes in the trees in different areas of the playground and have children listen for the different sounds they make.
15. Spring clean! Hold a bike or riding toy wash. Provide buckets of water or spray bottles, rags, and dishwashing soap.
16. Play “How many jumps does it take?” Choose a spot on the playground such as a tree stump or a play structure. Ask children to estimate how many jumps it will take to get there. Each child jumps, then counts to test his or her estimate.
17. Get Winded. Make multicolored streamers and then take them outside on a windy day!
Do you have a great project that you would love to try, but lack the funding? Apply for a microgrant and you could win $200 and a FlipVideo camera or an iPod nano with video to make it happen! The deadline for this microgrant is May 25. Don’t wait-apply today!
It is with great admiration and excitement that we congratulate our partner, PCI Education on their recent accolades from the Association of Educational Publishers.
The WeAreTeachers team celebrates PCI Education for this prestigious and well deserved honor and appreciate the outstanding resources, support and thought leadership they provide to the WeAreTeachers community.
bring the science behind them to your students. From the recent weather patterns to a worldwide event in sports, we know these projects will help your students understand the importance of science in everyday life.
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