Our study on Animals In Winter began with a puppet show and then with reading lots of books about animal habitats. We visited the 4th grade to hear about animals that they created and to see how they made them so they could adapt to winter. We were very inspired. We found animals that we could use in our block corner and in the sand corner. We created habitats using branches, pine needles and cones and lots of other things. We could not find books on all the animals that we wanted to study. We decided to take a trip to our public library. We met the librarian and told her what we needed. She directed us to the area that had books on all kinds of animals. Almost everyone found a book on their animal.
We went to The Discovery Museum in Turners Falls. We saw many different habitats and the animals that live in them. They looked real! At that point we had chosen an animal to study. It was particularly exciting to find our own animal. The people at the museum thought we were very smart and were impressed by how much we knew about animals. We loved the animal scavenger hunt.
Finally it was time to write our reports on our animals. We researched our books to find out: Where our animal lives in the winter, What our animal eats, When our animal has babies and how many, and other things that are special about our animal.
We spent time observing what our animals looked like. We drew our animals over and over. We then began to sculpt our animals out of clay. We had hard decisions to make: Should we use feathers for our tails or use clay? What should we use for our eyes, beads or painted clay? After the clay dried we had to decide what colors to use.
We learned about our animal's winter habitat. We created the habitat out of shoe boxes. Again, after much research we gathered the things we needed durning a walk. We found pine boughs, rocks, twigs and "snow". We painted the background and foreground.
We now were ready to open our Winter Habitat Museum. We invited our families and the first grade classes. We each had a station and invited friends to listen to our reports and look at our dioramas. It was a great success and lots of fun! In our next post, you will see pictures from the event!
We spent time observing what our animals looked like. We drew our animals over and over. We then began to sculpt our animals out of clay. We had hard decisions to make: Should we use feathers for our tails or use clay? What should we use for our eyes, beads or painted clay? After the clay dried we had to decide what colors to use.
Some don't look like they're 100. They are
We had a party to celebrate! We had 10 bowls of food and planned to eat 10 of each. How can we eat 100 pieces of food???? "I can't do that, I'm going to bring them home." (Danny P.) Some kids decided they could never eat so much. One child thought he should stay home!
