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Plant & Animal Differences

Learn about the differences between animals & plants by sorting them into different categories. Discover more about mammals, birds, insects & plants with this fun activity for kids. Find out which category living things such as bees, penguins, horses, butterflies, humans, trees and flowers fit into. Work fast as the conveyor belt moves across the screen, quickly put the different plants and animals into the correct boxes. Take up the challenge and enjoy this cool, educational game.

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Plant & Animal Differences - Mammals, Birds, Insects - Games & Activities for Kids

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Plant & Animal Differences Learn about the differences between animals & plants by sorting them into different categories. Discover more about mammals, birds, insects & plants with this fun activity for kids. Find out which category living things such as bees, penguins, horses, butterflies, humans, trees and flowers fit into.

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Plants & Animals

Learn about plants & animals as you spot them in an outdoor scene, discover more about where plants and animals live as well as other interesting facts. Different animals tend to live in different habitats that suit their characteristics, this is the same with plants, which thrive in an environment that suits them. See if you can spot living things such as flowers, trees, insects and birds as you complete the fun activities in this cool, interactive science game for kids.

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Plants & Animals - Living Things - Science Games & Activities for Kids

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Plants & Animals Learn about plants & animals as you spot them in an outdoor scene, discover more about where plants and animals live as well as other interesting facts. Different animals tend to live in different habitats that suit their characteristics, this is the same with plants, which thrive in an environment that suits them.

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reverse ducttape bracelet for a fun naturewalk

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After planting our seeds, we wrote the steps to planting a seed.  Hopefully, someone else could read our directions and plant their own seeds.

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This freebie contains a cut and paste sheet for plant parts, a cut and paste for plant needs, two garden/plant picture dictionary pages and a writing page.

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Mission 1: Learning the basics
Edible plant parts can be super tricky! Kids sign on for an investigation mission and see if they can make an inference about what plant part different snacks are. First, give each child a sandwich baggie with one of each of the edible plant parts featured above (sunflower seed, grape tomato, broccoli, spinach, celery, carrot). Then, kids make an inference about each item based on their observations. They lay each item in the correct box on the sheet below. Afterwards, discuss how they decided where to place each item. Then, ask students if they can think of any other seeds, fruits, flowers, leaves, stems, and roots we eat.

Mission 2: Seed Investigation
1. As a class, create a list of all the seeds we eat. See how many edible seeds students can think of without any help.
(Examples: pomegranate, corn, peas, peanuts - if no allergies, edamame, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, etc.)
2. Bring in a pomegranate, cut it open, and eat some seeds!

Mission 3: Earn the title of Master of Edible Plant Parts Detective - Kids explore on their own!
Set out real edible plant parts and tape labels on the table (Seed, Fruit, Flower, Leaf, Stem, Root). Kids sort the vegetables and categorize them under the correct label. Students check their work with the teacher and earn a badge to glue in their science notebook!

Here are a few examples:
Seed See examples from seed investigation

Fruit

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Mission 1: Learning the basics Edible plant parts can be super tricky! Kids sign on for an investigation mission and see if they can make an inference about what plant part different snacks are. First, give each child a sandwich baggie with one of each of the edible plant parts featured above (sunflower seed, grape tomato, broccoli, spinach, celery, carrot).

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Demonstrate how seeds adapt by conducting the pine cone experiment with your class! Drop a ripe pinecone into a bowl of water. Leave it submerged in water, and be amazed as the pinecone starts to close up. What's happening?! The pine cone is adapting to its environment! It closes up when wet ("protecting the seeds inside the cone"). Once dry, it opens back up! Click for the full explanation. Check out a time lapse video of the experiment . To find out more about pine cones - are they living or dead - click !

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Demonstrate how seeds adapt by conducting the pine cone experiment with your class! Drop a ripe pinecone into a bowl of water. Leave it submerged in water, and be amazed as the pinecone starts to close up. What's happening?! The pine cone is adapting to its environment!

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A collection of virtual field trips for elementary and middle school students.

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Running Time: 9 min.

"Don't go yet, because there's lots of airplanes and birds covering the sky!" warns a wary air-traffic controller from his cardboard perch above a mockup of a plane loaded with his classmates. But it's only a minor delay for students of the Yellow Pod, a small segment of the 460 kindergartners who attend the Auburn Early Education Center, in Auburn, Alabama. Soon, they will be virtually winging their way to Brazil on a fantasy flight aboard their handcrafted plane, culminating two and a half months of preparation for the role-playing exercise as part of a yearlong study of South America.

At this award-winning kindergarten learning center, shared with a special education preschool, the students decide what projects they want to tackle, and teachers guide them to resources, on the Internet and in books, that help them create something from what they learn. Whether they're building an airplane or a cruise ship, or conducting a funeral for the class praying mantis, AEEC students are learning more than basic facts and skills. They are acquiring a taste for the process of lifelong learning.

"These kids have a very authentic, real purpose for learning," says AEEC principal Lilli Land. "When you want to find something out, what do you do? You go to the computer, you get on the Internet, you get a book. You don't go to an adult and just have them feed you all the information. You have to learn to be a problem solver; you have to learn to be resourceful. So we teach them to be lifelong learners, and you have to keep them excited about the process of learning."

Although the project-based curriculum generates much of the enthusiasm for learning here, a recent infusion of technology -- putting interactive whiteboards in every classroom -- has raised the bar for students and teachers. Touching a giant screen, teacher Sandy Armstrong calls up a wall-size map of South America and points to Brazil. "That is a big place!" shouts a boy kneeling in front of her. And when she starts a video clip of an imposing anaconda, he says, "I'll bet he's gonna slide and slither and try to bite him."

"When they put it in our classroom and I saw everything that it could do just playing with it, and my kids were so excited, I could see what a difference it made in a matter of weeks," says Armstrong. "Even the teachers that have been teaching for twenty-five years that are afraid to jump into technology, they have jumped in with both feet. It's rejuvenated their ideas and their motivation."

As part of the school's literacy focus, a dedicated technology coach gives one-on-one instruction to students, who can manipulate giant letters on the interactive whiteboard. "They have a lot of problems when it comes to m and w," says Armstrong. "When they can flip the m over and it becomes a w, they get it. They'll say, 'Oh, it's standing on its head!' It's so much fun for them to do, and they're actually in charge of it. They have the power and, therefore, it's more pertinent to them."

As standardized-test pressure bears down on even the youngest learners and their teachers, Lilli Land challenges other principals to adopt AEEC's project-based-curriculum approach.

"We're teaching all the required content area, but we're doing it in a way that's more innovative, creative, that's off the path of what most people choose," Land says. "But there are many people who think, 'Well, we have to have the workbooks; our kids have to do drill and practice.' That's just scratching the surface, and it's also turning kids off to learning. And so you have to really be confident and trust in what you know is appropriate and good for young children, and believe that if you're actually involving the children every day in activities that are going to make progress in the academic areas, they're going to be fine on assessment."

Ken Ellis is executive producer of Edutopia video.

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Kindergartners Explore Through Project Learning | Edutopia

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Running Time: 9 min. "Don't go yet, because there's lots of airplanes and birds covering the sky!" warns a wary air-traffic controller from his cardboard perch above a mockup of a plane loaded with his classmates.

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How does weather affect your daily life?

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How does weather affect your daily life?

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Students create an informational book on weather as a class.

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This site has some great ideas to incorporate into a unit.

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Kindergarten classroom teacher site for New Albany Plain Local Schools

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Students choose an insect to research to create a page for a class Insect Field Guide.

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HTH Student ProjectsThese projects are examples of the work that is done at all of the High Tech High Schools. It is our record of what we have done and how to get there. Teachers can utilize this to display what they have done with their students, and get ideas from others teachers.

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Would be a great simulation for Kinder students to engage in while learning about butterflies.

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We finished up our butterfly/moth study this week with a little butterfly sipping experiment. The students used their butterfly proboscis (straw) to sip nectar (apple juice) from a flower.

After we did this little experiment, the students had to come back and write what they learned about how butterflies eat:

Here were some of our centers this week:

Matching time to the hour and half hour.

Unscramble the butterfly sentences:

Sort butterfly nouns and verbs:

Next week, we are learning about insects so I will be carrying over some of the activities that are in my Butterfly Bonanza unit. All the above activities are included in this unit and you can check them out by clicking on the picture.

For our writing center next week, the kids will be making "Bugs on a Log" and writing a "how to" telling how they did it.

These are my old posters that I used for this little activity (back when I literally cut and pasted everything!)

These are the ingredients you need to make "Bugs on a Log":

Now that I am becoming adept at using the handy dandy laptop, I have updated the old posters into these:

After they make their "Bugs on a Log", they will write how to do it on this sequencing/writing form:

Grab yourself a copy by clicking on one of the pictures above.

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We finished up our butterfly/moth study this week with a little butterfly sipping experiment. The students used their butterfly proboscis (straw) to sip nectar (apple juice) from a flower. After we did this little experiment, the students had to come back and write what they learned about how butterflies eat: Here were some of our centers this week: Matching time to the hour and half hour.

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Rocks and soil study

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A great list of potential projects!

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PBL Ideas for Kindergarten - Stephanie Hairston-Prunty ~ Instructional Coach

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Three Little Pigs story. In this activity the students are to imagine that there are no bricks available and that they have to help the third pig by using the Engineering Design Process. They will build a house for the third little pig so that when the wolf comes to visit, he will not huff and puff and blow the house down.