Trains, Planes, and Seed Dispersal

Prep time: 20 mins. Class time: 50 mins. Materials: Enough sheets of white paper for the whole class Crayons, colored pencils, or markers Pre-made example sheets are not necessary, but helpful These past two weeks, my first-year students have found their end of the year energy and display it in extra spurts of delighted impromptu …

Plant Anatomy: From Stamen to Sepal

Prep time: 20 mins. Class time: 20 mins. Materials: Various colors of construction paper or cardstock Scissors Markers Blu-tack Notecards or printer paper Whole things are the sum of their parts, and sometimes to learn the parts, it is helpful to create a whole thing. This was the perspective I applied to teaching a short …

Read and Write: Life Cycles

Prep time: 20 mins. Class time: 20-30 mins. Materials: Colored and white printer paper or cardstock Coloring utensils: markers, crayons, or colored pencils Scissors Glue It seemed like the first year natural science book knew that spring was coming. The unit on life cycles came up this week just as the last of the almendro …