Explore Tubs for Weather & Seasons {with Freebies}

Here are some more Explore Tub ideas! Explore Tubs are like early finisher tubs in Science class for when students finish their Interactive Science Journal page. You can read more about the tubs {here} and see my Senses tub ideas {here}. I will change these six tubs out with each unit. I teach four units in Science: Weather & Seasons, Five Senses, Objects & Materials (although I usually combine the Senses and Objects & Materials units together), and Living Things. These are my Weather & Season explore tub ideas!

*Four Seasons Floor Puzzles by Lakeshore Learning

*Four Seasons Picture Sort {by me on TpT}--I used sticky velcro dots to make my sorting game. Students sort the picture cards by which season they would do the activity.

*Books about seasons: Snowmen All Year, My World Seasons, Calendar, I Can Read About Seasons, Spring Into Summer!/Fall Into Winter!, Watching the Seasons, A Tree for All Seasons, What Season Is It?, The Reason for the Seasons, and The Four Seasons.

*Animals That Hibernate, Adapt, and Migrate Posters {download free here}--I copy the posters back-to-back so one side is blank and one side has the animal pictures. Then I have a variety or small plastic animal toys that the students can sort onto the pictures. They can use the blank side for a challenge, or match the toys to the pictures for an easier task.
*Books about hibernation, migration, and adaptations: All About Hibernation, Bear Snores On, Animals in Winter, Migration, A Den Is a Bed for a Bear!, Animals in Fall, Sleep Big Bear, When Will It Snow?, Very Hairy Bear, The Busy Little Squirrel, Over and Under, and Why Do Animals Hibernate?

*Weather Bingo Game {by me on TpT}--A game for up to six players to practice weather vocabulary.
*Dress for the Weather Bulletin Board Set from Amazon--I laminated all the pieces of the kid and clothing, attached the kid to a cookie sheet, and put magnets on the back of the clothing pieces. I made {these cards} to go with the centre so students choose a weather card and dress the kid up for that weather!
*Books about weather: What Will the Weather Be Like Today?, Weather, Raindrop Plop!, Weather Watching, What's the Weather?, Split! Splat!, Weather Words, Like a Windy Day.

*Cloud View Finders {free from this blog}--I attach the view finders to a popsicle stick. Students can look out the window and try to identify types of clouds.
*Cloud Mat {free from here} and White Play-Doh. I print the mats on blue card stock and laminate them, then let the students make cloud shapes using the white Play-Doh.
*Books about clouds: Cloudette, It Looked Like Spilt Milk, The Cloud Book, Clouds, I See It, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, The Little Cloud, and Clouds.

*Shadow Card Matching Activity {free here}--Students match the animal picture to it's shadow! They can play memory or just match the cards up.
*Small Flash Lights
*Hand Shadow Puppet Idea Print Out pinned and printed out from here
*Free Shadow Puppet Print Outs free from 100 Directions. I laminated the puppets, cut them out, then hot glued them to popsicle sticks to make shadow puppets!
*Books about shadows and light: What Makes Day and Night, What Makes a Shadow?, The Sun, and Bear's Shadow.

*Types of Tornado Matching Activity {idea pinned here}-- You can download my tornado mats and pictures cards for free here. I used sticky velcro dots to make my matching activity. Students match the types of tornadoes with the pictures.
*Tornado Tube from Amazon--fill one bottle with coloured water and attach it to Tornado Tube. Add another empty bottle to the other end of the Tornado Tube. Students can swirl the water to the tornado!
*Tiny Tornado Tube from Amazon
*Thunder Tubes from Amazon
*Books about extreme weather: Barn Storm, Extraordinary Wild Weather, Underpants Thunderpants, Just a Big Storm, Fires and Floods, Blizards and Tornados (from Science Vocabulary Reader Set), Hurricanes and Tornadoes, Danger! Eathquakes, Extreme 3-D: Wild Weather, Franklin and the Thunderstorm, Thunder-Boomer!

More Bears!

This week was our bear/hibernation theme. Lots of fun! If you have not read this book, you must! It is HILARIOUS! (Especially the ending... loved it! haha)

Here are some of the nonfiction books we read this week to help us fill in our bear chart.

We looked at these four types of bears: brown, black, polar, and panda. Here is the chart we created:

When we talked about what bears ate, we did this fun little taste test/graphing activity that came from Rachelle over at What the Teacher Wants! Check out her bear unit here... super cute! I wish I had more time to do all of the activities. We tasted strawberry jam, tuna fish, and honey on crackers. We graphed our favourite bear food. Also included in Rachelle's unit, students coloured in their own graph and then answered questions about it.

During our reading/writing time, we read the book "Goldilocks and the Three Bears". We compared it to the book "Growl!" and did a little T-chart about real vs. fantasy.

The next day we read "The Three Snow Bears" and compared it with Goldilocks in a Venn Diagram. You can download the student version by clicking the picture below.

We have been working on addition and just started talking about "Tens Partners". We created this rainbow anchor chart to help us remember them!

In Rachelle's bear unit, she has this cute activity called "Bears in a Cave". One partner closes their eyes, the other partner uses bear counters (I used Teddy Graham crackers) and puts some in each circle. They write the total in the square at the end and then covers up one of the circles with a "cave" (paper cup or bowl). The other partner guesses how many bears are in the cave. You can use any number of bears. I had mine use all ten bears, so the sum always stayed 10. This was great practice for the "Tens Partners".

When we started talking about hibernation, we read a book called "All About Hibernation".

Then we created a large poster called "Where do animals go in the winter?". I got this idea from the very creative Amy over at Fun 4 Kids. See all of her winter animal ideas here! My students coloured the large background poster. Then they coloured the animals, cut them out with the labels, and glued them into the correct winter home. Then we added some cotton balls for snow! Super cute!

If you would like a copy of the poster, click the pictures below. I print the background on white 11 x 17" paper. The animals/labels are on half of an 8.5 x 11".

Amy also had a poem on her blog called "Winter Animals". It has some cute actions to go with it. We practiced the poem all week, then today we glued it into our poetry journals and illustrated it.

Click above to download the poem.

And last, but not least, we read the Bill Martin Jr. / Eric Carle books, "Brown Bear, Brown Bear", "Polar Bear, Polar Bear", and "Panda Bear, Panda Bear". Kids love the fun rhythm of these books. If you haven't checked out Mrs. Kacey @ Doodle Bugs Teaching, go there now! She has some amazing "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" centres and activities for FREE. Check here and here.

I created an art lesson to go with these books. There is a simple pattern to use and you can create any of the four bears: brown, black, polar, or panda. Students use plastic combs (or a piece of cardboard) to create different paint techniques. Click on the picture below to download the full directions and patterns for free from TpT.

These are the samples I created. I let the students choose any colour background.

Here are my students working hard on their artwork. It was actually a pretty easy project to get all together. We did the painting one day and the assembly the next day.

Here is the finally picture of them all together. (Our class is called 1T by the way, so the bulletin board makes sense....) They did such a good job! Although I don't know why a few of my bunnies thought that a blue marker was a good choice to use to draw the whole face.... hehe

Have a great weekend, everybody!