Owl Week (with freebies!)

Full disclosure: this post is actually from last year, and due to glitches with one of my files, I never posted it.  Better late than never, I hope!

What better time than October to study owls?  They are such beautiful, fascinating birds and we had a blast learning more about them.

We read book about owls . . . .

Watched owl videos . . .

and of course we did owl-themed activities!

After reading and learning about owls and their carnivorous diet, Colby completed this cut-and-paste activity, gluing the prey animals in the owl's belly:

For a free copy of this activity, click here!

We listened to some owl calls,

and used this fun owl spinner to work on graphing, ten-frames, and addition.

Not all of the materials included in this activity are shown here - there's a lot more in the download!

(I bought this inexpensive pack of spinners: plastic game spinners, but you can also make your own with a paperclip!)

This activity includes addition and ten-frame worksheets, task cards with recording sheet, spinner, and graphing sheet.  Get your free copy here!

If you've never seen an owl eject a pellet, now is your chance!  We started Owl Pellet Day with this icky-but-interesting video:

Then, we broke out the actual pellets!

(We got our owl pellet kit right here.)

We examined,

we measured,

we dissected,

we identified,

we learned,

and we recorded our observations in this FANTASTIC free booklet by Renee Dooley.

You can download your own free copy at her TpT store; don't forget to leave feedback!

The boys really found the owl pellets fascinating!

We examined some of the teeny bones under the microscope, too,

and saved the bones to assemble another day.

Colby and I read Owl Moon by Jane Yolen:

and made good use of this book study by Little Red's Schoolhouse:

It's a fantastic packet for grades 1-3 and we strongly recommend it!

For lots more owl-themed ideas and freebies, try our Pinterest board:

Owl Crafts and Activities For Kids

Happy Halloween, everyone!

    

Eat Like A Bear! (Freebies!)

It's Bear Week here at HHH!  Colby has had so much fun studying bears from around the world, and especially eating lots of "bear food"!

Inspired by First Grade Garden's fabulous bear chart, we focused on four types of bears this week: black bears, grizzly bears, polar bears, and panda bears.  My original intent was to copy her chart, but all of my large chart paper was lost in our recent classroom flood.  Instead, I adapted it for use with our large hanging pocket chart:

Please excuse the messy photo (and my husband's work boots at the bottom)!  Because of the flood, we've been unable to use the classroom and had to hang our chart in the living room on the stair railings.

Download the chart title, column headers, and questions here

You can write the students' answers on index cards or anything similar, but if you'd like the blank cards we used, you can download them here.

I also created a set of worksheets to go with it.  There is one for each type of bear, and they look like this:

The big, blank box at the top is space for the student to draw a picture of the bear in its habitat.  Then there is space for the child to choose three interesting facts, write them, and illustrate them.

Download all four Bear Facts Pages here!

On Monday, we started off with a great video from one of our favorite YouTube channels, Animal Atlas:

Then we read Eat Like a Bear by April Pulley Sayre, and illustrated by Steve Jenkins, one of our favorites!



What a great book!  It was a fantastic introduction to how a bear's diet changes through the year as different foods become available and others scarce.  It was also a great jumping off point to discuss how a black or brown bear's diet is actually pretty similar to a healthy human diet!  We're both omnivorous, and have lots of foods in common.  We decided to "eat like a bear!" all week and made sure we ate lots of foods that bears like:

Fish
Crabs
Bison/Venison
Leafy greens
Roots & Tubers
Honey
Berries
Apples & other tree fruits
Nuts

We also discussed how, like humans, bears have a natural sweet tooth.  If they have access to lots of honey or other sweet foods, they will eat more than they should.  Not only can this keep them from eating the healthier foods they need to store up quality fat for winter, it can cause cavities in their teeth, just like ours!  Bears with rotting teeth often die when they can no longer tear and chew the foods they need.

Colby had a blast stuffing himself with the bear foods from the list!  We eat venison regularly, but we'd never tried bison before.  We picked up a few pounds of bison burger from the local bison farm (check out Beech Hill Farm & Bison Ranch!) and immediately became huge fans.  It's actually quite similar to the beef from our Highland cattle.

Colby filled out this Venn diagram comparing bear food with the foods he eats:

Download a free copy here

Some of the foods that ended up in the "bears only" section were grubs, ants, etc.  We don't eat insects (at least, not on purpose!), but we discussed the fact that lots of people around the world do eat grubs and bugs regularly and though it seems gross to our family, they are actually nutritious foods for both bears and humans.

On Tuesday we read American Black Bears

After the book, we filled out the cards for the "black bear" column of our chart.  Then Colby completed the worksheet, choosing three facts about black bears to write down and illustrate.

The next day, we read Grizzly Bears by Gail Gibbons:



We filled out the "grizzly bears" column of our chart, and Colby completed his "Grizzly Bears" worksheet (finished product shown above).

On Thursday, we read Polar Bears by Gail Gibbons:

Then the chart, and the worksheet of course! ;)

And finally, Giant Pandas by Gail Gibbons:

Our chart was complete and looking fantastic, and all four worksheets are done!  We're going to make a cover for them and staple them into a book.

I hope our freebies can help you in your own bear unit!

For more great freebies and DIY homeschool ideas, check us out on Pinterest!
174 Boards and counting!

Vertebrates & Invertebrates (Freebie!)

Both of my boys are exploring life science this year, which means that their curriculum overlaps at least some of the time (thank goodness!).  Right now Colby is learning some basic comparative anatomy: vertebrates vs. invertebrates. 

Our classroom laptop is playing a larger role this year than it previously has.  Carefully chosen online games and videos can keep one child engaged and learning while I work one-on-one with the other.  I got a pair of good headphones with volume control (Kidz Gear Wired Headphones For Kids), so that the computer sounds aren't a distraction.

This video on vertebrates and invertebrates was great for Colby.  It's less than six minutes long, but it's well done and there's lots of good information!



Bobbie Kalman is a fantastic author of science books for children; we rely on her often.  Her name is one of the first searches I try when I'm trying to find the right book.  The books above are perfect for first graders studying vertebrates and invertebrates!

We completed this cut-and-paste sorting activity and added it to Colby's Interactive Science Notebook.  There are 18 creatures to sort; it can be a bit tricky!

 

Vertebrates included are: shark, frog, wolf, bat, walrus, chameleon, bird, snake, and penguin.
Invertebrates are: crab, jellyfish, butterfly, earthworm, scorpion, clams, spider, fly, and starfish.

If you'd like a free copy of the sorting activity, click here!

Another great book to try is Bone by Bone: Comparing Animal Skeletons by Sara Levine.

Both of the boys read through it more it than once; it's a pretty cool book!

For more ideas and activities, check out our Pinterest boards!  Almost everything on our 168 (and counting!) boards is either free or DIY.

Do you have an awesome idea or activity for learning about animal classification or comparative anatomy?  Share it in the comments!

Interactive Science Notebook - Physics Freebies, Part 1

Hunter kept an interactive science notebook last year, and I'm finally getting around to sharing it with you!  

It was the 4th year in our science cycle, and our focus was physics.  Our main text for the year, which I recommend to anyone teaching physics at an elementary level, was Level I Physics by Rebecca W. Keller Ph.D.  It is part of the Real-Science-4-Kids series, and you can also purchase the accompanying Teacher Manual and Laboratory Worksheets if you feel you need them.

Click on the photo to check it out on Amazon.com.

For the actual notebook, we like to use the Pacon Artist Sketch Diary.  It's nice and large, with much sturdier pages than a regular notebook.  The best part is, they're nice and cheap!  Because they are so much larger than the composition notebooks commonly used in classrooms, the elements I design are usually larger too.  Most things will easily fit in a smaller book, though not necessarily in the same layout we use - you will probably have to put fewer elements on each page.  I also try to offer a smaller version of certain elements in the same download, so hopefully everyone can use them!

All of the vocabulary and definitions come from the book we used.  If the definitions don't suit you, simply have your student write under the flaps rather than gluing the provided definitions.  Vocabulary terms included in this flapbook are: physics, physical laws, force, energy, and work.

Download the vocabulary flaps and corresponding cut-and-paste definitions here

The first force we studied was gravitational force, and we supplemented the main text with these two books:

  

and this video:

Who doesn't love Bill Nye the Science Guy?

This notebook page shows that gravity pulls things towards the center of the earth from every direction.  In the frame, Hunter has written:

Gravity is a force of attraction between two objects.  Objects with greater mass have greater gravity.  Earth's gravity pulls things toward the center.  No matter where I stand on Earth, the center of the Earth is "down".

On this page, Hunter has shown that the Sun's gravity pulls on the Earth, and the Earth's gravity pulls on the moon. 

Download these pages here

This basic sort reinforces the difference between mass and weight.  Often in elementary school these terms are used interchangeably, and while that's not always incorrect, I like to be clear that they are not the same thing.

Download the Mass vs. Weight sort here

This was a really fun activity.  Hunter completed this wheel, showing how much he weighs on Earth, and how much he would weigh on the moon, the sun, Jupiter, and Mars.  We talked about how his weight would change as the gravitational force changed, but his mass would remain constant.  We used this very cool free calculator from exploratorium.edu to find his weights on the different planets:

Click the pic to visit the calculator!

Download the My Weight on Other Planets wheel here

This is how we notebooked through our experiments!  I took pictures of each step and created custom frames for Hunter to record his hypothesis, methods, results, and conclusions.  We found this particular experiment in the back of Gravity Is a Mystery (Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science 2).  It helps students discover for themselves that objects of different sizes and weights will hit the ground at the same time.  The shape of an object, however, can slow it down.

This page simply contains Hunter's conclusions from the experiment, and a staggered flap book called "Facts About Force".

The facts Hunter chose to include in his flapbook are as follows:

The Newton is the standard international unit of force.  Usually abbreviated as "N".

Forces occur in pairs and can be either balanced or unbalanced

Forces have a magnitude and a direction.

Example: 7N, South

Magnitude: 7 Newtons

Direction: South

Download the Facts About Force flapbook here

(The download is set up so that it can be printed on two different colored papers, as shown above.)

This page has a lot going on!  In a smaller notebook, all of this won't fit on a single page.  Some elements may need to be glued into a smaller notebook the long way.

This flapbook comparing balanced forces, unbalanced forces, and net force includes cut-and-paste definitions to go under the flaps, if you choose to use them.

Download this flapbook here

A rocket launch is the perfect example of unbalanced forces at work!  Hunter glued in the photo (which is included in the download below), then added two different colored arrows beside it showing the direction of the thrust, and the weight of the rocket being pulled in the opposite direction by gravity.  Underneath, he explains:

The thrust of the engines is greater than the weight of the rocket.  The unbalanced force shoots the rocket up.

Just a little rocket math here!  The first problem is simplified for elementary students and asks the student to find the net force behind a hypothetical rocket launch.  The second is tougher, but even a younger kid can do it with guidance and a calculator.  The main lesson for Hunter was how to plug two known values into the equation (Force = mass x acceleration, or F = ma) to find the unknown value.  We worked it out, step by step, with Hunter recording each step as we went along.

Download these page elements here

This page has eight simple problems for calculating net force.  The green arrows show force being applied to the box from each side, with the magnitude of each force noted (all numbers are between 0 and 20 to keep things simple for young kids).  Explain to the student that when the two forces are going in the same direction, you add the numbers together.  When the arrows point in opposite directions, you subtract the smaller number from the larger. 

In the close-up, you can see the forces in this example are equal and opposite.  The net force is therefore 0, and the forces are balanced.

Download Calculating Net Force here

I have a lot more to share from our Interactive Physics Notebook; I hope to have the rest of it up very soon!  Consider following us on Facebook or Bloglovin - there are freebies galore planned for the new school year!

*Interactive Science Notebook - Physics Freebies, Part 2 is now up!  Check it out!

For lots and lots of Interactive Science Notebook ideas and freebies, try our Pinterest board:

Interactive Science Notebook

Or, for more free or DIY physics resources, this board:

Physics for Kids