Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Desert Unit

For the last two weeks Lincoln and I have been working on learning about the desert. I was reading in one of my preschool books and came across a list of things a preschooler should know before kindergarten. One of the things on the list under General Knowledge said that children should be able to recognize and name animals and their habitats, such as farm, ocean, jungle, and desert. Both my kids have a good understanding of the farm, but I wasn't sure about the others. So, that's how this unit on the desert came to be. We'll probably cover jungle and ocean fairly soon too. I really liked the astronaut lap books we did last time from homeschoolcreations.com, but they don't have a desert unit. So I ventured out and attempted to make my own, using theirs as a model. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out too. Here is the PDF if anyone is interested. I am willing to share it for free, but it's for personal use only, so no selling it. :) And if you do use it, please share your thoughts, I'd love to see it in action in other places too.

Desert Unit

I wasn't sure if Lincoln would find the desert very interesting, but he LOVED this unit, I would say at least as much as the astronaut one. One of the first activities we did was to make a diorama of the desert. It turned out really cute, I thought.


I got a whole bag full of books about the desert from the library, but the two we ended up using most were
-The Seed and the Giant Saguaro by Jennifer Ward
-Way Out in the Desert by T.J. Marsh

We also watched The Magic School Bus episode All Dried Up, quite a few times. You can find it on youtube. For some reason Magic School Bus does a fantastic job of explaining a lot of information in a small amount of time and in a simple and clear way. My kids love it.

We still did book reviews and writing our name in this unit. I've decided that Linc can write really well when he wants, but if he doesn't want there is nothing you can do to make him. It's almost humorous. But something I did this time to help make it more fun, was that instead of every name tag being the same, I put different animals on each one and he got to pick which desert animal he wanted to be for the day. He liked that, especially the day he picked to be a scorpion.

We had a fun desert song that we sung to the tune of the wheels on the bus. Here are the lyrics:

The rattlesnake in the desert goes hiss hiss hiss

hiss hiss hiss
hiss hiss hiss
The rattlesnake in the desert goes hiss hiss hiss
All night long!

The jackrabbit in the desert hops like this
hops like this
hops like this
The jackrabbit in the desert hops like this
All night long!

The roadrunner in the desert runs fast like this
runs fast like this
runs fast like this
The roadrunner in the desert runs fast like this
All night long!

The gila (pronounced hee-la) monster in the desert crawls slow like this
crawls slow like this
crawls slow like this
The gila (pronounced hee-la) monster in the desert crawls slow like this
All night long!

The scorpion in the desert stings like this OUCH!
stings like this OUCH!
stings like this OUCH!
The scorpion in the desert stings like this OUCH!
All night long!

Other things we did were recognizing starting sounds, patterning, grouping, working with numbers and some tracing. The activity Lincoln liked the most was the one where he cut out different pictures and had to paste them in the "Desert Things" column, or the "Non-Desert Things" column. We also did one that had 10 different pictures of cactus that were missing their spines. Each cactus had a number by it 0-10 and he was supposed to draw the same number of spines on the cactus as the number next to it. He liked that one a lot too, and did pretty good.

One of the days during our desert unit, I was in charge of teaching our preschool group, so I just kept with the desert theme because it was easier than going off topic. With all the kids we had a "roadrunner relay", which means I took them out in the back yard and had them run from one end to the other pretending to be different desert animals (hop like a jack rabbit, slither like a snake, run on all fours like a javelina, etc.). They had a great time.

Then we came inside and made cactus out of ceramic salt clay.


How to make a salt dough cactus:

1 cup salt
½ cup cornstarch
¾ cup water
Saucepan
Wooden spoon
Stove
Green food coloring
Spaghetti noodles

1. Cook the clay ingredients over medium heat in a saucepan. Add green food coloring until desired green color is achieved. Stir with a wooden spoon until the mixture thickens into a ball. Remove from heat and place on a piece of foil to cool. Knead the dough thoroughly.

2. Shape into a cactus shape.

3. Break spaghetti noodles into small pieces and stick them into the cactus sculpture for spines/needles.

*Salt ceramic clay often needs to be re-kneaded to make it smooth and pliable again.
*Clay can be stored in an airtight plastic bag until ready to use.
*Salt ceramic dries to a rock hardness without being baked. It takes a few days.

After Lincoln's cactus dried, we put it in his desert diorama with his desert animals. He thought that was cool.

But I think our unit was a success. Lincoln can name the desert animals, and tell you a few of the ones that eat each other. My favorite word to hear him say is javelina. It sounds so cute coming out of his little mouth. He can tell you that if you plant a cactus seed, then a cactus is what it will grow into. He's getting a lot better at recognizing patterns and reproducing them. And he's a pro at starting sounds. I think next time I might try ending sounds, because starting sounds are not even a challenge for him. I love seeing him make progress and being so into the topics we learn about. Linc kept asking me if we could go to a real desert some day (so Stace, maybe we'll be coming out sooner than later).


Anyway, I was also pretty proud of myself for putting this unit together. It's far from perfect, but I learned a lot doing it, and I think next time I'll be able to do it even better. But feel free to check out the PDF (the link is at the top) and tell me what you think. Also, don't judge my unit by my inability to take photos of it. :)





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