Hi everyone! I wanted to take this chance to give you some specific ways that you can extend the Entomology Project at home. Here is a list of ways to build on what we are doing at school, and ways to follow your child's particular interests: 1. Make a foldable (or book) based on an insects life cycle. Butterflies are always a good choice, but wasps, flies, ladybugs, and moths also go through a very interesting metamorphosis. Here is a description of how to make a foldable that could be modified to meet your particular needs: 2. Try being an Entomologist in your own backyard. Head out to your garden or a park and start collecting data. You could have the goal be that you are going to create a graph that shows the amount of different insects you find. First you would decide what your categories are going to be. You could tie this in with classification (how many beetles, how many bees, how many flies). Then you would collect the data. You might watch your child and see how they decide to record the data (are they making a line for each insect that they see, are they writing a number) and then have a discussion about how that method either worked or did not work. After that you could create a graph that visually displays the data. 3. Watch a nature documentary and choose two insects to compare and contrast. We have been learning all of the different insect parts (head, thorax, abdomen, antennae) and the students should be able to use this language when describing the similarities and differences between insects. 4. We are going to begin learning about the scientific method by going through experiments both as a class and in small groups. You could choose to use the scientific method in a completely different area of science (geology, physics etc). By going over the important vocabulary (hypothesis, analyze, observations etc) you will be reinforcing the work the child is doing at school. Here is a link to a short description of how to use the scientific method: 5. Another way to extend what we are doing in class is to dive further into classification. This week we are working on classifying insects based on the same criteria that scientists use (whether the insect has a hard shell or not, stinger vs. no stinger.) I chose to have them classify into boxes that I created on the desk in order for them to be able to move them around and reclassify. It might be an interesting extension, to continue this practice at home focusing on what your student's interests are. If your child is very interested in ants, then have them cut out different types of ants, and sort them based on various characteristics. This could lead really nicely into doing research as well, because some of the time the information needed is not apparent in the picture.
I hope you find these ideas helpful! Reminders/ Announcements -This Saturday is a Family Work Day from 9am-3pm. We are going to be building "Little Libraries" around campus! Books are also needed, and can be dropped off at the front office :) -Tuesday January 28th is the Pot Luck Jubilee from 6pm-8pm. Please let me know if you have any questions about anything :) Robin Comments are closed.
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AuthorWelcome to Robin's Core 2 Blog! Archives
February 2017
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