Summer 2015 updates:
6/26: We had a really fun week! We colored pictures, learned vocabulary words like cold-blooded and warm-blooded, invasive species, throat pouch, dewlap, plastron, carapace, venomous, brackish, freshwater, regenerate, alligator hole, apex predator, and more! The younger children learned wide and narrow, thick and thin, and we all saw many pictures of alligators, crocodiles, lizards, salamanders, geckos, snakes, turtles, tortoises, frogs and toads. We also did a couple alligator projects, a frog puppet, made some of our own paper lizards and turtles, and the older children who wanted to made parts of books for alligators, turtles, snakes and frogs. Our visitors included a bearded dragon, a cute baby tortoise and Jungle Gardens brought an Indigo Snake, a Red-Eared Slider, a Florida King Snake and a juvenile alligator named Sergeant. The children got to see all the animals walk around the inside of our circle, and got to hold Sergeant and pet the snakes and turtle! We sang some songs like "mmm aaaa went the little green frog", the monkeys teasing Mr. crocodile song and saw a couple of theme-related music videos.
6/9:
We've had a fun two days so far, with a lot of scientific vocabulary, concepts and some experiments as well. The children have been learning that atom are made of protons, neutrons and electrons and have had a chance to play a game where they have a bank of them to make stable atoms. They learned that atoms make molecules, and learned some specific molecules and what they are made of. Mr. Casey has also gone over magnets, states of matter and more. The children played around with magnets and did a sink or float activity, guessing which items would do which. And some of the children have been making and adding to their science journals.
Stay tuned for more science!