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Hi Everyone!
I'm looking for fun and simple ideas for first graders with and without disabilities. I am the special education teacher and would like to incorporate "movement" (e.g., hula hoops, dancing, exercises) to science. We do "movement" every morning to help with gross and fine motor skills. Does anyone have any ideas to incorporate a little science at the same time?
Alicia
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I found an excellent article about using clay to make animals, but you put something inside the clay to simulate bones which then will make the clay animals stand better. I thought it was a great way to study the skeletal system with young students. I have attached a link to the article. Let me know how your students respond to this lesson.
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Hi Alecia,
A resource you may find helpful is the NSTA Early Years Blog
I didn't find anything specifically related to your question, but there is a lot of great information there for early childhood teachers. Peggy Ashbrook also writes a column in Science and Children about our youngest scientists called the Early Years.
Carolyn
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@Alicia:
Hi! You can have them work on either being a solar system, or doing 'day and night' rotations. for a really fun game. You can have them spin around (slowly) so they can understand day and night. They spin to face the sun = daytime. Face away = nighttime. Then, you can have another student circle them and that's the moon.
Then, you can have the kids move around a student in the center (or you) and that's an orbit. 1 Earth orbit = 1 year. Then, you can have the kids spread out and they can be the planets orbiting the sun. They could get the scale of the solar system and some of the basics of planetary motion. This would probably take a few days to do for first graders, but it's a way to do movement and some gross motor skills.
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My Kindergarten classroom is an inclusion classroom so I also make sure that all students are doing as many varing strategies as I can think of. To include movement with science lessons, I might have the students "pretend to be" any of the things that you are working on at the time. They can pretend to be a living or nonlving things and show what that means. They could "pretend" to be the solar system, as another person suggested. You could incoporate the use of the hula hoops into that. You could also incporte science songs that include movement. There are several thematic CDs from Scholastic that are all about movemnet - I use these with my srtudents all the time and they absolutely enjoy it. Good luck :)
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@Betty: Thank you for you post. I will try it with my students and let you know how it goes. We play a game during our wait times (e.g., waiting in line at the cafeteria). For instance, I will say, "hands on your head, hands on your knees, hands on your chest...hands on your stomach" and instead of putting my hands on my stomach, I'll put them on my shoulder. It's a fun game. After I get a chance to do this clay activity and we learn about bones, I will try and implement those bones in this game.
@Carolyn: Thanks for the information. I haven't gone on the blog before you posted the link. Thank you :)
@Angelo: I love it! I can't wait to try this with the students! Their gonna love it!!!!
@Arleen: I'll check out the scholastic website for movement CD's. I love doing hula hoops with the children. They pretend they are driving cars or driving a space ship. It's a blast.
Thank you everyone for your responses.
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I just found this website and it has LOTS of lesson ideas!
http://www.need.org/needpdf/Primary%20Science%20of%20Energy%20Teacher%20Guide.pdf
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Thank you Adah for all the articles!
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Alicia,
Thank you for the link to the great PDF on Energy. I am sharing it with several teacher friends of mine.
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