Last Friday, things got a little dirty in 1st grade.
Students were able to play with dirt and explore it in so many ways. |
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They loved breaking up the clumps of dirt and using magnifying glasses to get a better look. I bought the magnifying glasses for $1 at the Dollar General. |
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This is probably one of the most engaging activities we have done in Science as you can tell from all of the pictures. |
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This picture captured the activity wonderfully! Each child is engaged in some way. Most are feeling of the dirt to feel its coolness and consistency. |
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This is definitely something I will do again next year as long ad I am teaching a K-2 grade. |
We have Science books that we "use" at school, but I mainly use it as a guideline. Sometimes we pull it out when we talk about Nonfiction books or to introduce topics, but I use it only as a resource. We are moving into Landforms & Soil, so I went on Pinterest to do a little research for something fun to do. My kids LOVE Science! Unfortunately, we only get to do it 1-2 days a week for about 30 minutes. I try to splurge on my time a little bit on Fridays or if we finish Math early. :)
I started finding bits and pieces of things that I wanted to do until I stumbled upon Nancy Vandenberge and her awesome first grade resources! We used her We Dig Dirt Unit to help us in our 1-day mini activity. I was going to have the student collect their own dirt, but it was a cold January day and it was a little mucky as it rained the day before. I went ahead and got the dirt in ziplock bags for each group. I put a paper plate in the middle of each group and dumped the dirt out. The kids were fabulous about not touching the dirt until all materials were on their desk, and we had a minimal amount of mess to clean up afterwards. I gave each student an observation worksheet where they colored what they saw on one side and wrote about it on the other. I also gave each group a magnifying glass to look at the dirt.
Without prompting them, the kids started saying things like "This dirt is cold!" and "This clump has a lot of rocks in it!" After we had our fill of touching the dirt and looking at it closely (and even smelling it for some of my lovelies), we washed our dirty hands and began to color what we saw. I told them to use those awesome descriptions they were saying when they touched it to use on their writing.
After we cleaned off our desks, we enjoyed the rest of the afternoon eating a special dirt pudding snack. All of the special snacks for 15 students cost me less than $10, and I got everything from the Dollar Tree (aka Teacher's Paradise). :)
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