October Science Projects

First graders have very curious minds.  This year I have been trying to let them have more exploration.  The science journals have helped.  They also allow an outlet for the students to record their explorations.  I hope to use them more effectively as time goes on.  This October, my class was showing great interest in researching different things.  Before I explain their projects and how we did  them, let me note that this was a lot of work for me as the teacher.  I have learned things and ways to make it easier in the future.  Even though it was difficullt, it was worth it.  I started out by limiting what they could study otherwise it would have been too much  for me.  Since Halloween was close, bats and owls were popular.  Some however, did not want to study this so I gave them the option of birds.  I began by having them write down what they wanted to study on an index card.  I also had them write down what kind of project they wanted to do.  Below are some of the cards.  I took the information and paired the students up according to topic and project.  Some of the projects changed over time, but this gave a starting point.

I know I am slow at updating. I started about six posts but never finished them. I'm going to try to do that now. 

Below are some of the projects they came up with, mostly on their own.  

On the picture below, I wanted to point out the two bats on the left.  The boys had no trouble writing their books, but the real learning came when they tried to make a model of the bats.  This is about their fifth attempt to get it close to proportional.  They learned a lot about the body of the bat. 

We learned that some bats eat about 2000 insects a night.  Two of my girls were like, "how many is 2000?" They wanted to see how many it was so they could understand. We came up with the idea to put one bead for each insect.  The girls counted groups of 10 and then put 10 groups of 10 into a little cup to make 100.  This helped them keep track of how many they had. It was a really big help since this took them several days to complete.

There were three students who wanted to study owls.  The picture below was made by one of the students.  The torn paper represents the owl's feathers.  Below that is a book that the whole group made.  Each student made one page in the book.  

Two of my boys were interested in where bats lived.  At first, they wanted to mark where EVERY bat lived.  We decided that was WAY too much.  Using a map and trying to make a simple legend was difficult for them.  It was their first experience trying to do anything like this.  

The picture below is the beginning stages of two of the models above.  They are the beginnings of a bird and a bat.  In this group, the two compared/contrasted the two.  The clay they used was better than I expected.  Also, it was not too expensive.  Two more students made models but I can't find the pictures of this stage.  They are, however, the two birds in the first project picture. Those that choose a model also had to write a little book about what they learned.  

Sorry some of the pictures aren't too great but you can get the idea.  I have tons more but they have my students' faces in them and I can't post those online.