Science for kindergarten

Elementary Curriculum and Training » Elementary Science K

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Perspective: Direct Instruction.
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Created: 2007 05 14 | Percent completed:

What is Elementary Science K

Elementary Science K is the teacher's guide for teaching science at the kindergarten level.

Each unit is numbered and can be taught in one day. Each unit also contains scripted instructions for the teacher. Most units contain workbook pages, activities, images, and/and video clips.

Short video clips [1] (5 to 20 seconds) can be added to integrate current events into the curriculum. For instance, the idea of science is to ask questions and get answers. Could there be life on Mars? To answer that we sent rockets and rovers to Mars to get pictures and samples of the surface. You can show video clips, often free from NASA, a government agency, that shows rover taking samples.

Also, pictures can be added to enhance and describe scientific ideas, experiments, or events.

What order do I teach this in?

Each state has different standards that include subject matter to be taught at specific times. This makes teaching this science module more difficult. It might be a good idea to align your state standards to this curriculum and make some modifications. Please make a note of your state standards and it's alignment to this program in the talk section (discussion tab).

Physical Science

Understand structure and properties of matter.

Describe size and color of objects.
Things are made of parts

Life Sciences

Organisms: Understand the characteristics, structure, and functions of organisms.

People, animals, plants need water, food, and air.

Heredity: traits in living things

Cycles are patterns (leads to life cycles, hereditary)

Diversity/interdependence

Different external features of plants and animals

Earth Science

Earth materials

Materials can be used over again
Change can happen to many things
- Things change in some ways and stay the same in some ways. ^[1]
- People can keep track of some things, seeing where they come from and where they go.
- Things can change in different ways, such as in size, weight, color, and movement. Some small changes can be detected by taking measurements.
- Some changes are so slow or so fast that they are hard to see

Space Science

Earth in solar system & universe - Earth, sun, moon, and solar system

Identify the sun, moon, stars, and Earth.

Scientific Inquiry

Ask questions and get answers based on observations

Raise questions about the world around the students ^[2]
Describe things in terms of their number, shape, size, and color
Make observations

Design investigation to answer question

Follow a list of steps

Collect and present data

Describe or draw simple observations
Understand and make a simple graph as a class or group
Observe changes in world

Analyze & interpret results

Describe data from graph

Activities

M&M counting activity
Guess how many things there are in a set and then count to see who is right
Students compare, combine, equalize, and change numbers as well as "take away" and "add to"
B is taller than A, C holds more than D - do bar graph

^[3]