Kids Art: Animal Edition

So many of my friends are sharing fun learning activities to do at home with your children while so many of us our out of school.  I saw this post today from Ideas and Fun (@ideasandfun).  They shared so many ideas on how to use hand and feet prints with paint to create animal art. Visit their Facebook Page to see more fun activities to engage your little ones!

I love this activity in particular, because it brings science into art.  All of the different examples below use hands and feet to create specific animal pictures.  While this is a fun craft activity, you can relate it back to science in many ways. 

Children can talk about the colors of different animals, and look at how some of them have different colors or patterns on different parts of their body.  This can lead to discussions on animal adaptations.

When designing your animal, children will have to think about the anatomy of their animal.  They will have to look at structure and patterns to understand how they can use something like a hand or foot to represent an animal's body.  They may have to add extra parts of the body by drawing or painting.  This helps children think about the different parts of an animal's body and can start basic conversations about anatomy.  For example, the bee below has wings.  What other animals have wings?  Do cats have wings?  Why not?  Children can talk about how animals are classified into groups based on different types of body anatomy.

An addition to any picture would be a background.  Children can add more to their pictures by creating a background for their animal to live in.  Children might look up where the animal lives in the wild and try to recreate the environment by adding in native plants and other animals that their animal might interact with.  They can also learn about animal behavior by creating a background that shows their animal doing something.

Happy creating!  Activities like these can help foster student interest in science, and allow children to use their creativity to help them question and learn about the world!

#science #distancelearning #scienceteacher #education #art #painting #crafts #scienceconversations #talktoyourkidsaboutscience #parentteachers #animals #biology #environmentalscience #anatomy #animalbehavior #adaptations #visuallearning #elementaryscience #preschoolscience

Science Drawings

I saw this article earlier today:  How to Start Drawing and it made me think of how often I use drawing and sketching in science. 

How do you use drawing in science?  It's easy to think of using drawings and sketches to record observations.  You might sketch what you see in nature or record a drawing of a lab apparatus or show what the result of an experiment looked like.  Drawings are visual information, just as much as graphs, tables, and diagrams.  A drawing can help communicate about an idea and help others understand a concept or process.

As a teacher I often use drawing when teaching science.  I will draw diagrams on the board all the time.  When I'm teaching zoology or biology I often draw out animals to show anatomy or draw diagrams to show how cells go through the process of mitosis.  I draw even more when I teach Earth sciences.  I often draw diagrams to help students understand geologic processes, or how to interpret date (like using rock strata to understand geologic time and relative dating).  From my own experiences with drawing I have found that it does not really matter if you are a good artist.  Most scientific drawings are used to help understand information.  Even a basic drawing with stick figures can help illustrate what part of the body you are referring to or help show basic motion in a process.  I often use words and arrows to label my diagrams, and I have found that my students are able to follow along perfectly fine as I'm drawing and explaining an idea.

I think drawing can be very helpful to student learning.  Drawing activates different parts of the brain than writing or speaking.  If you can layer an activity where students write, draw, and speak about a topic you are allowing them to deepen their own learning process.  I have found that asking students to draw pictures or even concepts about words helps students visualize and increase comprehension of a topic.  Asking students to draw a process or diagram is a quick formative assessment that can help both students and teachers see what students really understand, misconceptions, or ideas that need further discussion and clarification.

I have used sketching and scientific drawing in class for many activities.  If you'd like to see some examples, then visit my store:

Teaching how to Observe:
*Observations & Scientific Sketches for Microscopes and Field Observations - Coming Soon!

Nature Walk Observation Sketches:
*Ornithology Student Bird Walk Observation Record
*Bird Excursion Booklet
*Duck Decoy Lab - Learn How to Use Binoculars

Lab Data Sketches:
*Microscopic Animals Data Sheet
* Microscopic Plants Data Sheet
*Sea Urchin Embryology Data Sheet
*Experimental Design - Training a Spider to Jump

Anatomy Review
*Invertebrate Worm Comparison Foldable for Interactive Notebook
*Vertebrate Skeletons
*Triploblastic Invertebrate Body Cavity Comparison Foldable

Review Books
*DNA Replication Student Created Books - Genetics or AP Biology

Earth Science Diagrams
*Types of Igneous Rocks Organizer and Comparison of Volcanoes Writing Prompt
*Anatomy of a Volcano and 3 Types of Volcanoes

#DistanceLearning #ScienceEducation #ScienceTeacher #Science #Inquiry #Drawing #Sketch #Learning #VisualLearner #StudentFocused #StudentCentered

Free Book: How to Teach Nature Journaling

This looks like a pretty good book. There is a free PDF download, if you're interested

http://emilielygren.com/product/how-to-teach-nature-journaling/?fbclid=IwAR2xyVRx00sxd-IS0ZBPYoXBrXckjyp_2gf2MPq5lmbXc5XWo9QD3OjycIA

#distancelearning #scienceeducation #scienceteacher #science #Inquiry #Exploration #free #naturejournaling #journaling #sketching #fieldstudies #observation

Scientists give cuttlefish 3D glasses and shrimp films for vision study

I feel like I'd have to talk about this with students. :)


Scientists Give Cuttlefish 3D Glasses and Shrim for Vision Study




For my non-zoology friends -- cuttlefish are related to octopus and squid. They are super smart, can change color to match their surroundings and to communicate with others, and can solve all sorts of puzzles.

Oh my goodness - there's a video: 

If I were to use this with my students, I'd ask them to read the article first.  We would practice some science literacy skills, and students would use a graphic organizer to diagram the steps of the science experiment.  After we discussed the experiment and answered any student questions we would watch the video clip.  Students would finish by writing a reflection of their thoughts - why they think this experiment could help us understand something and what further questions or modifications they would like to see for future experiments in this topic.

 #Zoology #Anatomy #NervousSystem #AnimalBehavior #scienceandenvironment #scienceliteracy #learning

Wild Raven Quilled by a Porcupine asked for Help

This is pretty cool. A wild raven got quilled by a porcupine. He couldn't get the quills out, so went to find a human to help. And he stood on a fence and let them pull out 3 quills. Pretty amazing. Shows how smart these birds are, because wild animals do not usually trust people and let them get this close, and this guy even put his head down to let her pull out the quills.

Parrots as Pets

Parrots are loud, messy, and quite a bit "wilder" than domesticated cats and dogs as pets. Many species aren't really good pets at all. But, on the plus side, a few of them talk, which is pretty cool. 

Keely is my snuggler, and would love to be on my shoulder 24/7, as long as we don't stay too far away from her cage for too many minutes. That being said, she often asks to be picked up and then doesn't actually come. She's had some issues with phobias that we've worked on (a solid 2 year period one time), and she does some feather picking - but she's better there than she's been in the past. Keely never got to learn to fly as a young bird, so doesn't have that ability now. She is my parrot with the biggest vocabulary, and is the most likely to use a phrase in context. Keely was an only pet for about a year, and to this day is disdainful of all other pets in our house, and orders them about. She is 16 years old, and I got her when she was about 3 months old.

One of my other parrots, Ginny, is always willing to come out and get snuggled. She almost always will step up if offered the opportunity. She's strong willed too, and always looking for an adventure. She's a wiggler, and can't stay still for long, so will not sit with you passively for more than a few minutes. Then she's off to find something to explore and probably chew. She goes through an amazing amount of cardboard boxes in her cage and reduces them to teeny tiny confetti. She'll work on her projects for hours each day. She is insanely jealous of Keely, and actively tries to take her out at all costs whenever the opportunity arises, in spite of the fact that Keely is bigger and meaner and would probably win in any battle. Even though Keely is the better talker, Ginny picks up many of the phrases that Keely says (and smartly figured out how to substitute her own name into the litany). They make a chorus back and forth once the talking starts - both basically trying to talk to me and outdo the other one. Ginny is about 14 years old, and she was handfed by my mom until she changed allegiance and bonded strongly to me on one of my trips home from college - to the point of viciously attacking all others.

My last parrot is a little cockatiel, Quiggly. Quiggly is off in his own world. He's not part of the battle between the "girls" for my attention. He's actually just as happy talking to his reflection in his bell or the doorknob. He's a fairly hands-off bird, and suffers through kisses and cuddles with many screeching protests. He's okay to occasionally come sit on your shoulder or the back of the chair - but on his own terms. Usually when he's wanting some attention he'll launch himself off his cage and onto the floor (he's very ungraceful and although he can fly when startled, makes little attempt to fly in his normal daily life). Then he'll walk over to me and get a step up. Quiggly loves to be the first bird to greet you when you come in the door, and will often repeat, "Hi, Quiggly" over and over again until I acknowledge him. He also loves it when you come near his cage to talk to him and/or attempt to whistle. Quiggly is my baby. He was born from my mom's birds and handfed by her. He was born spring 2009, so is 5 years old.

Help a Turtle Cross the Road