I don’t know about you, but I could really use some cooling off from this HOT summer sunshine! So, today, I thought I’d share with you about how I taught my kindergarteners about the Ice Age! Here we go for the fourth installment of Theme Thursday!
I’ve mentioned before that we use the curriculum called Mystery of History to get ideas for my history themes. It’s geared for MUCH older students, so it takes a little work to adapt it for Kindergarten! However, I like a challange- and I came up with some fun ideas (and took a lot from Pinterest!) to help my kindergarteners in Tanzania, almost all who’ve never experienced weather below 60 degrees, discover the Ice Age!
I decided to host an Ice Age Day in my classroom. We spent ALL day learning about the Ice Age! Here is how my Focus Wall for this theme started out.
Believe me when I say that keeping things frozen in Tanzania is NOT EASY. I found this fab idea to put toys and different trinkets in a plastic storage container and freeze it. Then, the kids would have to “excavate” the toys from the ice! Well, of course, the night before “Ice Age Day”, our power was out for a few hours. And even though I had stuck my container in the freezer a couple days prior, it wasn’t completely solid! #lifeintanzania #rollwiththepunches #TIA
Thankfully, the block of ice was mostly frozen, so the activity still worked! We went outside with our “eyedroppers” full of blue water and spoons, and got to work!
It was a great way for my students to experience the ice, and build their schema! They also had to be creative to break the toys from the ice; and they had to work together! I have 12 students, so one block of ice worked fine. But, if you have a larger class, I recommend doing 2-3 of them.
This kept them working for a good 10-15 minutes, and by the end we had retrieved all the toys, and we were definitely cool as cucumbers! 😀
Then we went back inside to discuss the activity, and we used an anchor chart to anchor their learning. (no picture 🙁 ) After teaching them about the different animals in the Ice Age, and showing pictures, we did a woolly mammoth craft. The template came from Learn, Create, Love. They turned out SO cute, but I probably will use paper for the tusks next time, as the felt didn’t stick very well!
We have a 15 minute snack break mid-morning, where the students eat and play outside. During that time, I used fabric over my windows to make the room dark, like a cave! The students DEFINITELY had a lot of background knowledge on that- as the power can go off at crazy hours, making it feel like you’re inside of a cave! I had sent home a note earlier that week to have students bring in a flashlight, or lantern, if they had one. Using mine as well, each student was able to use one for our next activity!
We turned off all the lights and made CAVE DRAWINGS! This idea came from Alejandra Chavez. We used crumpled up brown butcher paper, and drew pictures on it. I recommended drawing some animals we had learned about, or tracing their hands. I showed them pictures of some actual cave drawings to spark their creativity! They had a lot of fun using their flashlights!!
We also got to squeeze in some of the Ice Age movie at the end of the day! I felt like my little kinders really got a good taste of the Ice Age, from our day of experiencing and learning!
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I was talking to some friends about Theme Thursday, and they wanted to join the fun! So I’m turning this into a LINKY PARTY!! If you have a theme you’ve taught in your classroom and you’d like to link up with me, here’s what you need to do:
1. Write a new blog post sharing your theme with us. Links and resources are appreciated!
2. Grab the picture to use in your post; and link it back here!
3. Link up below! I’d love for you to choose a picture from your blog post as the picture we click on to go to your post!
4. Follow the rule of 3 – go read and comment on 2 posts before you and 1 post after you- to share the love!
Much Love, Allie
