Fossils to Radishes to Museums

        It was a very busy day here in kindergarten.  We started with a fossil hunt outside.  Yes, our little paleontologists searched for fossils in the courtyard.  They had to record where they found their fossil, predict if it was a carnivore, herbivore, or omnivore, and then illustrate their fossil.  The kids also went to the garden to harvest the radishes they planted earlier.  They were impressed to see the different colors produced by the Easter Egg radish seeds.  Then Farm Abby showed us how seeds start to grow when soaked in water.  The kids used toothpicks to take off the seed coat, carefully split the seed and then find a baby plant starting to grow.
        After a Maine Day lunch with a special dessert whipped up for us by Mrs. Erdman's fourth grade, we took our hand at excavating fossils by using a toothpick to dig chocolate chips from chocolate chip cookies.  The kids will never look at cookies the same way again.  They worked for a half hour slowly finding each chocolate chip in their cookie.  We ended our day with a trip to Mrs. Erdman's class museum to learn all about Maine.  The year might be drawing to an end, but the learning is still fast and furious.

Push and Pull with Farm Abby

We put our knowledge of push and pull to real use today with Farm Abby.  We learned how the force of both push and pull are used when operating farm tools.  The kids started cleaning out one of the raised bed gardens to prepare it for spring planting.  

This afternoon we created an experiment to test the strength of different materials when pulling a bucket of blocks.  We practiced pulling using paper, yarn, crayons and rulers.  The kids recorded their results in their experiment notebooks.  

I'm not sure whether we were pushing or pulling when the limbo stick came out, but everyone had a good time celebrating Tropical Day by doing the limbo.  I would have added pictures, but somebody had to hold the limbo stick =).