Hibernating Animals

With the arrival of the first snowfall this week, the students naturally starting asking questions about what different creatures did to prepare for the winter.  The students discussed how to get ready for winter, people put on more layers of clothes, wear coats, mittens, snow pants, hats and boots.  They also turn on the heat.  Our Kindergarten team asked students how animals get ready for winter.  Through music, stories, drama and different activities the students learned that to prepare for winter some animals eat a lot of food so they can store a lot of fat.  Animals such as bears, ladybugs, some bees, garter snakes, frogs and chipmunks hibernate.  We learned that when they do this their breathing slows down and so does their heart-rate.  During activity time the students had a lot of fun building caves for our classroom bears to hibernate in.  They also used string, leaves and logs to build hibernating dens for frogs and bees who sleep underground.  We learned that ladybugs hibernate together under logs or in curled up leaves.

At our sensory station, students got to use kinetic sand, cotton balls, pine cones, and cups to build snowy dens and caves for little bears.  We made our weekly batch of play dough as a class and the students used it to create hibernating caves for the mini bears and other hibernating animals such as garter snakes.

After the students had built their creations, some took pictures of what they had built and then wrote about it for our Writer's Wall.  Some used knowledge gained from daily lessons and stories to draw their own pictures and create a sentence to go with it.

After our daily letter and number lesson each day the students also had the opportunity to read to different hibernating animal stuffies.  After introducing this once, they requested it each day.

Students also worked on hibernating animal inspired math activities this week.  They reviewed the names of the 2D solids (square, triangle, rhombus, parallelogram, trapezoids & hexagons) and used them to make garter snake patterns.  They also used different coloured bears to make patterns.  When they completed these they were allowed to work on pattern bracelets.  While looking at patterns the students also examined the pattern core which is the smallest part of the pattern that repeats over and over again.  The students also were given the opportunity to weigh the bears as a measurement activity.