Nature ABC Walk and Case Files for Nature Detectives

ABC Walk

After reading the book we are going on a Bear Hunt, Spiderman decided - it's a beautiful day outside, and we are going on an ABC Hunt! 
Why not? We love going on walks. Short ones, long ones, on feet, bikes, or scooters. Alphabet hunt sounds even better! Batman was given the task of recording observations. We decided to start with our backyard.
Don't forget your camera or phone, and nature bags to bring home the samples.

• A - apples, ants, acorns (asphalt - discounted by Batman as it is man made)

A for Apples!

Honeysuckle with Bees

• B- bug, bee, bark, buds, birds, butterfly
• C - caterpillar, crow, cloud, cat, car, creek
• D - dandelion, dog
• E - earth, eggs (from a bird's nest), eagle
• F - flower, fern, fly, feather
• G - grass, green leaves, gravel,
• H - hummingbird, honeysuckle
• I -  inchworm, iguana (if we had spotted one)
• J - jasmine
• K - kite, katydid (I don't think we spotted one, Batman did say that they are active at night, as he seemed to know something about it, I let it slide!)

L for Lizard

• L - leaves, lemon, lady bug, lizard



O for Orange Leaves

• M - mud, maple, mulch, moss

• N - nest
• O - orange leaves, owl (if we had gone out at night)
• P - pumpkins (decorations for fall), purple flower, (poop - from dogs, lol!), pine cones, palm trees, parachute seed, plants

R for Rose

• R - rose, rabbit

S for Snail

• S - stones, stump, seeds, squirrel, sun, snails, spiders, sand
• T - tree, twigs, trails made by above mentioned snails
• V - vine



W for web

• W - wind, water, weeds, worms, web
• Y - yellow flowers

The kids hypothesized that if we had gone for a nature walk near the lake, we would have seen dragonflies, frogs, fishes, turtles, ducks, tadpoles etc. All true!

Spiderman's thought - we should have taken a nature walk in the zoo, mom, then it would be real easy to come up with something for all the letters!

Here is a great extension to the ABC Nature Hunt:Make an ABC Nature book

Nature walks are great opportunities to engage all your senses. Here are some extensions.

 

Sound Walk

Extend your nature walk to a sound walk.What kinds of sounds do you hear? You can leave it open ended, asking them to record/draw 5 sounds for example.
Or you can have a checklist - 

1. Do you hear the wind?
2. Rustling of leaves?
3. Birds chirping?
4. Cars swooshing by? 
5. TV blaring?
6. Dogs barking?
7. Cats meowing?
8. Leaves crunching?
9. Baby crying?

Sensory Walk 

Feel the bark of the tree. How does it feel. Now feel the petals. Run through grass, wiggle your toes in the sand box, dip your feet in the creek, feel the sun on your back, and the wind in your hair...

Nature Detectives

We had so much fun, and Spiderman and Batman had so many questions to ask and observations to make, we decided to organize things a bit more for our next nature walk.
Presenting ...

Case Files for Nature Detectives

1. Space to record your ABC Nature Hunt from A to S - write or draw!
2. Sound Hunt
3. Two pages for Texture Hunt
4. Smell Hunt
5. Color Hunt
6. Color graph (see if their predictions match up with the graph)
7. Leaf rubbing page
8. Sorting - Plants or Animals
9. Venn Diagram - Living, Non-living, and Once-Living
10. A page to record the weather.

Download it for free, and have fun detecting and learning.
Please Note: This version is for personal use only. Teachers, please see my TpT Store.
 
The wonderful clip-art is from My Cute Graphics.

 

Fall Fun Giveaway

There is a giveaway, link-up fun, and a free printable in the post, so read on...
Please link your Fall themed Math activities, post and printables at the bottom, and enter the Fall giveaway.

To celebrate Fall, I have a fun fall giveaway. Just enter below, and win all of my Fall themed printables from TpT!  
Just go to my TpT store, and  under Categories, select Fall/Autumn.
That's 12 Math Centers and Literacy Centers printables, along with Fall Cutting Strips, and all the spooky Halloween themed fun stuff!


Here's a quick summary of some of the products.

• You can read about the Fall Cutting Strips (part of the giveaway) here.
• Fall Themed Skip Count by 2, 5, and 10
  
  • Each of the three files is 14 pages long. Each one has a 5-in-a-row board game, puzzles and tons of printables.
  
  
• Fall into Numbers Game
  • Teaches students about the commutative property, and how to decompose numbers. It targets Common Core Standards K.OA.A.3 and 1.OA.B.3.
  
  
  
• Halloween Math - Skip Count by 2, 5, and 10
  
   
• Halloween Math More or Less
  • Meets common core standards: K.CC.B.4, K.CC.B.6, K.MD.B.3, 1.MD.C.4, 1.NBT.B.3 
  • These Math Center Games gives students fun hands on practice on the concepts of more, less, equal to, most, least etc.
    The worksheets move from easy to hard. They work with numbers from 1 to 30. It will be hoot for students to finish the worksheets with these fun vibrant pictures!
  
  
  
• Halloween themed A to Z Alphabet or Poster Cards
  
  
  
    

• Halloween themed Long I Word Family Games
  
  • Trick or Treat with 5 Long I word games! 36 cards can either be sorted according to their word family (witches' hat word family cards), or be used to play card games (with 6 gotcha cards). They focus on these word families: -ice; -ide; -ife; -ike; -ile; -ime; -ine; -ite; -ive; -ight
  • The cross word puzzle, and placing the words in the correct boxes reinforce the same word families as mentioned above. 
  • The last worksheet with missing letters introduces kids to a few more families:-ipe; -ire; -y; -ie
    
• Here is a free Fall printable of preschool concepts from my TpT store.
• The worksheets teach visual discrimination, sequencing, estimation, counting (1 – 10), some fun handwriting practice, and letter recognition! 
• This is is free for a limited time only. Once the giveaway closes, it will be priced. So get it now :)
• Some shots from the file:

 

Now for the giveaway, finally......
  a Rafflecopter giveaway


Fall in love with Math!!

Fall Cutting Strips

Happy Tuesday!

Does it feel like Fall where you are? Still feels like Summer in Southern California...

To get in the mood, I created some Fall cutting strips.

Spiderman wasn't sure what months are in Fall. He knows that Fall comes after Summer, but not the months. And the answer of course depends on where you live. But for the U.S., there isn't much confusion. So, some fine motor control, some learning about seasons and months, and lots of fun! These clip arts are great conversation starters, or writing prompts.
Spiderman told me it would be "awesome" to jump on a pile of leaves. He thinks he would like to gather them the first time. But after gathering, jumping etc, he would be "too tired", so I would have to gather the leaves the second time :)

The one for September is free. Get it here.
Please Note: This is for personal use only. Teachers, please see my TpT store.



The pictures inspired him to hunt down Pumpkin Soup , and Delicious , followed by Leaves (a wonderful book meant for a somewhat younger crowd. In my house, Batman reads it, and Spiderman turns the pages), and Big Pumpkin , with more books being gathered. 

Spider-man's list (for right now):
1. From Seed to Pumpkin
2. Curious George Goes to a Costume Party
3. Quite a few Dora and Diego Halloween themed books
4. Spooky Bunny Tales (Max and Ruby)

Batman's list looks more like this:
1. Calender Mystery #10 - October Ogre 
2. Flat Stanley and the Haunted House  
3. Ready Freddy! #11: Pumpkin Elf Mystery 

We are still adding to the list...

I had made Halloween themed A to Z Cards. After cutting the clip-arts, and taking a look at the cards, the two super-heroes were happily (read no fighting, screaming and whining)  engaged in creating fall themed cards of their own...

For the other two months, take a look here. These are great to associate events with months. Halloween is in October, Thanksgiving in November etc. I will add more as the seasons change.

Find my post and other awesome ideas here.

Back to School We Go....

I just came back from KG orientation! Seems like I am more anxious than my Kindergartener! Batman seems to be taking it all in stride!

But Spiderman is feeling a bit left out. So I created these fun patterns in back to school theme for him.

Please Note: The file here is intended for personal use ONLY. Teachers, please see my TpT store.The one in the TpT store has more patterns, and has more complicated ones, like ABCD patterns. 

In addition to patterns, you can sneak in some fine motor skills. The child cuts the answer cards, and chooses one (or more card, depending on the pattern and the question) to complete the pattern. You can also laminate them or put them in sheet protectors, and have them write down the right answer, by getting them to write 1, 2 etc underneath the card in the right order!

You can see some samples right here.

Download the file from here. Have fun!

Ten Frames Fun

Please check out my TpT sale on all products. You can net a 28% savings :)


Now on to some free and on sale stuff on the store....

Spiderman has gotten interested in ten frames all of a sudden.

Ten frames are great visual tools for helping students to not only "see" the numbers and count - connecting counting to cardinality, but it's great with quick mental addition and subtraction, gaining understanding of place value, start composing and decomposing numbers into tens and ones etc. All in all, good stuff, and aligned with the Common Core Standards!

So  I decided to capitalize on this, and made some printables with themes I know he will like...
He has already played with the Pirate Themed Ten Frames previously, posted on my TpT store. You can read more about the fun "10 Doubloons" game it contains here. The game is fairly easy for Batman, so for him, it is purely a review. It also has the frames, of course. Spiderman has been working on his "spidey-fingers" by cutting out all pirate-y pictures to fill his frame.  

But then he requested something "different". So I made the space themed ten frames, which are free to download from here!
It has an empty ten frame for 10 and 20, space-y pictures to fill up those frames with, and for some great scissor fun, and it has the numerals from 1 through 20, along with their spelled counterparts.

I also  made some "I have-Who has" card games - three to be exact - for cardinal numbers and ordinal numbers, with the same space theme. Please find them here.

Batman has been making various jokes - about how he is 'having a blast with them', and 'these are outta this world mom'.

Well, at least all the jokes are complimentary. Spiderman does not get it yet....

The two games are definitely a bit of a challenge for Spiderman, and Batman is getting a decent amount of workout with these. Spiderman can't read yet, so he can't play the ordinal game. So please keep that in mind if you are downloading the games.

It targets the following Common Core Standards.

Counting and Cardinality

• Know number names and the count sequence
• Understand the relationship between numbers and quantities; connect counting to cardinality.

Number and Operations in Base Ten

• Work with numbers 11-19 to gain foundations for place value 
• Compose and decompose numbers from 11 to 19 into ten ones and some further ones
• Understand that the two digits of a two-digit number represent amounts of tens and ones. Understand the following as special cases: 10 can be thought of as a bundle of ten ones — called a “ten.” The numbers from 11 to 19 are composed of a ten and one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, or nine ones. The numbers 10, 20, and 30 are composed of one, two and three tens and zero ones.
  

Game 1: I have – Who has?

This game helps your little astronauts review their numbers from 1-30. The numbers are made up of yellow “ones” units and “tens” units. 

Game 2: I have – Who has?

This game helps your little astronauts review their numbers from 10 - 100, skip counting by 10. The numbers are made up of blue "tens” units. 

Game 3: I have – What comes next?

The astronauts start with the first ordinal number, and have to find the card that comes next. Astronauts may also practice placing the cardinal number cards in order from first to thirtieth.

You can find the games here.

I am hoping Spiderman and Batman gain (and build upon) a strong sense of numbers with all these fun tools! It is an added bonus that they are working towards the Common Core Standards as well!
If your little pirates, or astronauts find these useful and fun, please do leave me some comments and feedback :)

Monstrous Fun with Hard and Soft C Card Game

I love all the Pixar/Disney Animation movies, perhaps a tad bit more than my kids :)
 
Have you seen Monsters University yet? I am still trying to convince Spiderman that it is NOT going to be scary and super-fun. And of course, there will be popcorn. It is slow going so far.

In the meantime, to pacify Batman (who is starting to get the hang of Uno, and wants to play card games), I thought it might be fun to make a monster themed card game with some learning!

Hence our Soft and Hard 'C' Card Game. The monsters need some help with their C sounds at school. Think you can help them out? Well then, get ready for some "Monstrous Fun at  School"!!

 This is a a freebie. So just head on over to my TpT store and grab it. Just print on card-stock, laminate, cut, and you are all set.  

 

There are 18 cards with hard 'c' sound...

  
18 cards with the soft 'c' sound...

6 cards with both soft and hard 'c' sounds...

12 gotcha cards that make you lose a turn or draw again...

 and 12 empty cards.

And if your little monsters are not quite ready to read yet, no worries. The cards all have the pictures in them. So pre-readers and emergent readers are good to go. Everyone can join in the fun.