Turkey STEAM

 This week was filled with turkey challenges.

We began our STEAM afternoons by watching an informational video on turkeys. We learned some basic facts such as a male turkey is called a Tom and a female is called a hen.

Young children love new vocabulary and we learned two really fun words that elicited many giggles; SNOOD, and WATTLE. Ask your child where those parts of the turkey can be found.

The children were provided with a table filled with possible materials to create a turkey. They were given the opportunity to 'shop' for the supplies they would use for their turkey and got right to work.

So cute!

The next afternoon, the children were posed with an engineering challenge: DESIGN and BUILD a tower hideout that would hold a turkey and keep him safe from Thanksgiving Day hunters.

Architects began planning and drawing.

Then engineers got right to work.

Testing out the tower to see if the turkey could fit comfortably was quite a lot of fun!

Success by trial and error. The children made wonderful discoveries... very tall, skinny towers are weak and tend to tumble down. Towers with a larger base were more sturdy.

Is there anything these little learners can not do?

Animals Preparing for Winter... the PROJECT Stage!

 This unit began with the children thinking about what animals need to do to get ready for winter. These WONDERS moved us into an investigation where we gathered data about our wonders.

How do animals know winter is coming and what should they do?

We enjoyed watching several great documentary-type videos, read  so many fiction and nonfiction stories and felt we had all the information we needed to bring our learning to life.

In the literacy room, a forest grew. The children worked in collaboration with one another to get some BIG trees growing in their forest.

 

Soon after, a bear den emerged along with an owl tree and tunnel for a ground squirrel.

Shhhhhhh.....

Grrrrrrr....

In the discovery room, our little learners created a dark and spooky bat cave. They worked together to figure out a way to get those bats to hang upside down all clustered together from the ceiling of the cave.

They decided to build tunnels for the ground squirrels too!

The art table was opened and stocked with supplies for the children to create different creatures to go into their habitats; bats, snakes, and owls were the popular choices. Of course some beanie babies were added, as well as some spiders.

Enjoy some pictures of our finished products.

Shhhhh, bats hibernating!

Thanksgiving is coming, so the literacy room will be transforming into a grocery store and the two forest habitats were morphed together for one more week of play.