I remember very distinctly an art project we did in 4th grade. We sat there with a brown paper bag, and we worried at it, and crumpled it, and generally abused the paper bag until it had a texture similar to leather. This was then tied into the Native American living in California and how they tanned hides and used them for all sorts of projects. When you bring other subjects (like art) into your lessons kids remember it better, so remembering this lesson from my childhood I decided to use art to teach science in our science lessons a few years ago.
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Using Art to teach science
This week learned what to do if you meet a bear in the wilderness as a small part of our Apologia Land Animals lesson*.
After reading the material, we opened up our notebooking pages* and saw we were supposed to draw what to do. The kids happily drew pictures of what to do, and made their poster, but I wanted to make sure they remembered it. Besides I had a fun project pinned on my land animals board.
A few years ago over at Almost Unschoolers she shared about making a bear cave, a great example of using art to teach science. I stored it away and pulled it out this year.
We pulled out paper bags, colored, cut, stapled and………..
Created our very own paper bag bear caves. Yes those are all bears, these are not the dogs you are looking for…………..
And we used art to teach science. The kids loved acting it out.
I especially love Princess’ expression as she demonstrates yelling and hitting the bear to surprise it.
Now, we’ve got a fun short term toy to add into our play, and they remember what to do if they ever meet a bear.
A few more fun hands on science ideas for you
Let’s see what others did this week:
I used to run a weekly science linkie, and these are some of the great links that had been shared.
Finding the Teachable Moments shared a great unit on the Sun with us. I loved some of her reading activities that went with this science unit.
Highhill Homeschool shared some great videos about blood cells (no great picture to share from the post) and a slew of other anatomy videos. Give her some love ya’ll, she’s got a lot going on right now and still manages to post great stuff.
Thank you for spotlighting our Sun Unit! I was so surprised to see my little guy’s face here when I popped over to link up 🙂
I love all the hands on learning your kids had this week. Looks like they had lots of fun!
They really did, I need to think of more ways to do this 🙂
I was so surprised to see my electromagnet in you spotlight light. Thank you so much.
This is a wonderful way to encourage a lot of science.
I enjoyed your post a lot, and thought it was well done. I actually had a lot of really great posts last week, it was hard to choose the ones I did.
Congratulations on using a “pin” from your Pinboard! I know I always actually feel like I’ve “accomplished” something when I do that…it makes me feel like all the time I spend on Pinterest is justified… ;0)
I do too, it’s a big sense of accomplishment.
What a cute craft! I have yet to try a single one of the gazillion ideas I have pinned. They’re still there, though!
Did you make the superhero doll one of your boys is playing with? Am I vaguely remembering a post about that?
I did make it. And good memory, there’s actually a couple of posts about it, but the post sharing it originally is here: https://adventuresinmommydom.org/mailboxes-and-dolls/
I LOVE that pattern, and have made so many of them. They’re so much fun to make.
I don’t even want to think of the outrageously large number of pins I have that I haven’t even attempted.
What to do if you meet a bear – run, and hope the guy you’re with is slower than you. That’s what they teach us in Montana, anyway 🙂
Ha ha ha ha, that’s certainly what I would have thought.
What a great craft/learning idea! This would be great to do with my kiddos I nanny for, and Ava once she’s older!