Showing posts with label 1st Grade. Show all posts

August 20, 2013

What Causes an Earthquake?

A hands on demonstration for kids to see what causes an earthquake.

Earthquake Science for Kids

We live in Southern California, so I am no stranger to earthquakes. My older two boys have experienced a pretty big quake. Lately JZ (6) has been asking me a lot of questions about earthquakes, and he really wants to know what causes an earthquake. We love hands on science experiments, so I set out to find a way to demonstrate an earthquake to him. I found this site to be a great resource in explaining earthquake science to kids. My Google search found all sorts of awesome looking demos for older children and for high school science projects. Eventually I came across this experiment and felt it was much better suited for the age of my boys.

Math Games {Water Balloon Equations}

Gross Motor Math Games with Water Balloons

Water balloon equations - a gross motor math game

Who needs worksheets, when we can play math games? Okay, we do worksheets sometimes, but mostly I try to make JZ's school work hands on and unique. Hands on activities tend to stick with kids more than written work. (Of course he does plenty of copy work to work on handwriting.) For this reason we do a lot of active learning, combing a gross motor activity with an educational game. A few favorites include gross motor phonics, gross motor addition, and gross motor skip counting. Of course the best gross motor learning games include water balloons!

Word Family Freight Yard

Reading Practice with Wooden Trains

Please join me in welcoming Jessica of Play Trains! Jessica is the prime example of following her child's lead and expanding upon his interests. Her creativity never fails to amaze me as she constantly comes up with new games involving trains. One of my all time favorite posts from Jessica is her Angry Birds Letter and Word Crash featuring train play with LED lights.

If you ask my son, the Little Engineer, what his steam engine is pulling today, his answer is almost always an enthusiastic "Freight cars!" Freight -- loading it, transporting it, unloading it -- has been the backbone of his train play since the time when he was signing the word for "train" rather than saying it aloud. This fascination with freight makes it a great way to enrich train play. When the Little Engineer plays trains, the contents of his freight cars inspire an endless variety of stories. Finding or making the right freight can spark an interest in something new through otherwise familiar play. We've learned about everything from math concepts to holiday traditions in this way. These are some of my favorite activities to share on Play Trains!, because they create not only additional opportunities to learn through train play, but also new excitement about the trains themselves. With wooden trains as expensive as they are, I'm happy to do anything to prolong their status as favorite toys in our house! A couple of months ago, the Little Engineer started sounding out words in the world around him. Now that he was interested in putting his knowledge of letter sounds to use, I knew it was time to add more reading practice into our day. Inspired by a math activity we did with wooden trains and dice, I came up with a way for the Little Engineer to use letter dice to practice word families while playing freight yard with his wooden trains.

Gross Motor Phonics Games

Learn through Movement - Gross Motor Phonics Games

On Monday I shared the first post in the Learn through Movement series I'm doing with Mess for Less and Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas. For three days this week each of us will post an activity to help children learn while moving and playing.

Monday - Math

Gross Motor Addition Game

Number Hunt

Add it Up

Wednesday - Reading

Gross Motor Phonics Games
Musical Sight Word

I Spy

Friday - Science
Insect and Bug Movement Game
Science Experiments with Balloons

I set up two simple gross motor phonics games for my older boys. J-Bug (4) worked on letter sounds. JZ (5) worked on letter blends.

Supplies: (affiliate links provided)

I set up two game grids with sidewalk chalk. For JZ I wrote common letter blends to work on phonemic awareness. For J-Bug I wrote out the alphabet. Set up took less than five minutes, and then I called the boys outside to play.

The instructions were simple. JZ hit the hockey puck then blended the letters the puck landed on. For an added gross motor challenge, he chose a blend then tried to hit the puck on that letter blend.