The kindergarten children are very interested and enthusiastic with learning about science. Science is taught daily and includes activities in our classroom, outside in our gardens, and in the kindergarten common area.
A major focus for our study of science occures on Wednesday afternoons when each of our kindergarten classes come out one at a time to the K common area for an introductory lesson connected to the theme for that week. This may include the reading of a science related big book or a brief discussion on the current topic. The children are then broken into three groups where they each experience hands-on science activities that are planned by the K teachers but run by parent volunteers. Often these include science experiments, observations, and collecting data. During this 40 minute block, the children will rotate to all three stations. Many of our activities so far revolve around the theme of our Five Senses. Soon we will be exploring the huge world of animals.
In the classroom we frequently continue with related science activities often integrating these with reading, writing, math, and the computer. In addition,we have been talking about the weather and the seasons. We graph the daily weather in our calendar folders. Our discussions about fall have include changes in the weather which effect both plants and animals, sports and activities common to fall, and holidays in fall.
Our class has been working in our classroom garden every week. We have pruned over-grown plants, weeded, and watered the plants that survived from last spring. Soon we will be planted new flowers, some of which will attract butterflies. Last week we also began working in the lower division community garden where we have our class has our own raised garden bed where we planted herbs.
Yes, science is a vital part of life in the kindergarten. Everyone is learning so much and having fun, too!
