HOTS= A Sight for Sore Eyes and Na--Na--NaNa-Can't Touch This!

Apologies for the very nerdy, hopefully not too boring, report on science!
You know this nerdy, science blog post was written by the very nerdy half of kindergarten Squared!!
Stop reading here if you are trying to say awake for a while or KEEP READING if you want to hear about some cool science in kindergarten!

Anyway, while Cristy and  I are totally enjoying the crisp, cool Fall Football weather, we are burning HOT in the classroom!

HOT, otherwise known as Higher Order Thinking is that all important, researched based method for getting those kiddos to dig deep into the content and think about how they know things and why things are the way they are. Confused now, right??

If you are having a hard time integrating HOT into your daily lessons, just get to that science. Science is one area where the kiddos have blast making their brain grow while thinking deeply!

We are continuing our work on our 5 Senses, you know our Super Powers that help us learn about the world.

Today, was really a SIGHT for SORE EYES!! It was awesome. We reviewed our 5 senses, then discussed in detail what we need to see and all of the things we can notice just by looking at things.

The kiddos said, "We can see...
color, shapes, sizes, patterns, pretty things, ugly things and much, much more.

We then discussed that scientists often pose a question. So we posed the question, "What happens when things/people get further away?"  Then, the kiddos discussed with a friend what they thought. They decided that things would shrink.

So we generated a hypothesis (an idea you can test). One of my friends said, "Things that get far away will look like they are tiny."

What now? We tested that. Two kiddos kept getting farther and farther away. After testing, we discussed what we saw. We always incorporate HOT questions into science by constantly and continuously asking...

WHY?   HOW DO YOU KNOW?   HOW CAN WE PROVE IT?

After our experiment with sight, it was time to experiment with the sense of TOUCH! We followed the same steps:

Ask a question

Generate a hypothesis

Test It 

Record

Discuss

We asked, "Will you know what something is if you touch it?"

Our hypothesis was: You can know what something is if you touch it.

How did we test it?

We used the same 5 Senses Unit from Jessica Rosace as seen below for an awesome recording form.

Before you start: Create mystery bags. Enough so that students can work with a partner and each group has a bag to work with. Example, we each have 20 kids in our classroom. So, we made 10 bags so that each pair has a place to work. However, there were only 6 recording spaces. No Worries!  The kiddos only need to feel a total of 6 objects. For each of the 6 objects, the kiddos should describe what they feel, record what they think it is, then peek and record if they were correct, 

The only reason we had 10 bags instead of 6 was purely for classroom management!! Everyone needs a place to begin and everyone needs to constantly be engaged!

The kiddos had an absolute blast. After working in partners, we reconvened as a class. We had 1 friend, who was blindfolded describe one of the objects in the bag and discussed as a class. We just did this for a recap and ending discussion on our hypothesis. 

Hope you try some of these fun experiments out! Let us know what you do to get your kiddos excited about science!!