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Showing posts with label detective. Show all posts
Showing posts with label detective. Show all posts

Nature science detective kit for cool back to school activities with free printables


Looking for cool back to school activities? Here are nature science lesson plans to make nature detective kits to explore wildlife science concepts. Free printables included. Kids will love playing nature CSI investigators! Homeschooling parents will love these inexpensive, hands-on science lesson plans. 

To make nature science detective kits, you will need one of each of these items per student:

--large gallon size zipper bag or cheap carry-all bag to store supplies 

--plastic magnifying glass (available in bulk at Great Party, Dollar Tree or Oriental Trading)

--cheap one-subject notebook 

--pocket folder 

--nitrol disposable gloves (latex free) 

--tweezers or cotton swabs (both would be useful, but use cotton swabs to save money) 

--3 or 4 specimen bags (snack size Ziploc) 

--sheet of label stickers --pen and pencil 

-- roll of invisible Scotch tape 

--several pieces of yarn or string 

--box of crayons or colored pencils 

--measuring tape (here's a free printable measuring tape

How to Use Nature Detective Kits: Make kit assembly part of  the lesson. Set out supplies in stations and give students gallon zipper bag and supplies list. This provides experience in counting, sorting and organizing. 

Using stickers, kids label notebook: Investigator (name)____________ or Detective (name)____________. Label bags: Exhibit A, B, C or Evidence. As evidence is collected, data and date should be added. For example: "beetle exoskeleton 9-3-2022" 

Go on nature investigation hunts around your neighborhood, school playground or camp. Assign students different items to investigate, native to your area. Students should not keep living specimens, but they might bring a bug box to temporarily house and examine a living critter. Look for evidence of living creatures: bug carcasses, exoskeletons, fallen leaves, feathers, owl pellets, seed pods, rocks, fallen nest, bits of animal fur, bark samples, plants, flowers and rocks. 

Here are free printable animal tracking guides and footprints. Use these as coloring pages also. 

Here's another free printable animal tracking guide

Here are free printable animal coloring pages and here's another set of animal printables and coloring pages

Have students draw living creatures, homes and habitats: spider's web, bird's nest, wasp's nest, rabbit hole, ant hill, scat (animal droppings). Students should record when and where they observed it. Students shouldn't touch but may observe scat(animal droppings) or dead animal remains. In class, have children discuss and hypothesize on findings at their level of reasoning. Students might create a natural history museum displaying what they have found. Students can act as young docent guides, explaining discoveries to visitors. This makes a superb activity for parent-teacher conferences, which come early in the year before teachers have had time to collect much student work. It's ideal for summer camp, too


Use Miss Fishers Murder Mysteries to Teach History, Free Printables

I became hopeless addicted to Phryne Fisher, the saucy, sensitive, savvy Jazz Age Aussie lady detective of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries. She's part tart, part humanitarian, part intelligentsia, all tough cookie. She's a motherly vamp, if that makes sense. And can she hold her Mother-of-Pearl revolver...and gin! Tres elegante! And this show would make superb lesson plans for history.  Anticipating Miss Fishers Murder Mysteries Season 2

Free Printable Murder Mystery Games, for Mystery Genre Lesson Plans

Teaching a unit on mystery in ELA? Then I've got a treat for you. Just in time for Halloween, free printable murder mystery games. English language arts teachers and homeschoolers, feast your eyes on this plethora of free murder mystery games and murder mystery play writing prompts.  Print murder mystery party games and use as a companion American or English literature lesson plans. These activities would nicely supplement lesson plans on Agatha Christie, Edgar Allen Poe, Cornell Woolrich or other classic crime fiction. There's on that dates back to Elizabethan England to Shakespeare's time. Perfect for Readers Workshop, Writers Workshop or whole-class activities. From a vintage literati-mysterati, happy sleuthing!  "The Raven" (2012-John Cusack) is rated R, but could be a good connection movie in appropriate high school settings. Read on Read on