So many times I wish I had everything I need to do an activity with my five classes of two to five-year-olds—all in a kit. Managing materials in a way that doesn’t distract from the concept being explored, but keeps it foremost in the children’s attention, can be tricky. Because young children won’t wait for the teacher to find the bag of cotton balls or some other piece of equipment, I try to have everything in a box or on the table. Planning over a period of years, gathering materials for one kit at a time, is less daunting than feeling I have to have it all this year. If the preschools had a bigger science budget I would be interested in buying pre-made kits. Any suggestions from those of you who have used kits?
Note in the photo, that baby food containers are handy to re-use as small animal observation boxes.
Peggy
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I agree with having every thing you need prepared in a boz or some where neasr you. Being well organized helps a lesson or activity run smoothly. I too am a teacher and enjoy doing projects with my students. Indeed, we need more fund for Science in schools!!!!
I have used kits in various ways for both science and math activities. It can be a very effective way to manage and share materials between classrooms. The toddler classroom used a method called “flop and drop” boxes. They purchased rectangular, flat boxes from an office supply store, organized all of the materials for 1 activity inside, and clearly labelled the front of the box. Then they designated a shelf to store these self-contained activity boxes. They could then just pull one of these boxes and include it in their daily activities. In the preschool area, we worked off of this same idea and organized science activities in a common area between 4 classrooms. We then developed a pocket chart to “check out” the activities when we needed them. This multiplied our resources and decreased our work. Each classroom prepared boxes as they came across interesting activities and then these boxes were added to the common resource supply. This system really helped in keeping together the supplies for commonly used science activities and greatly improved the science and math activities we were able to offer to the children.
Can you give us an example of one of the most successful* science activity boxes? *(Teachers used it frequently, and kids loved it, and it seemed to further their science thinking.) What was the activity and what was in the box? Peggy