Ecology | Science in Storytime

A place to share cool science ideas for storytime!

Archive for the ‘Ecology’ Category

The Wonderful Ocean World

Mr. Tate’s class travels to Sunnyside Beach to help clean up trash. Captain Ned encourages the students to listen to the sea and they hear the many creatures that count on clean ocean water to survive. Captain Ned teaches the students that healthy oceans are important to all earth’s creatures.
The kids see how all of the wild life at the beach counts, with counting pages such as one whale, two seas turtles and all the way to ten bottlenose dolphins.

Breathe by Scott Magoon

This sweet story follows a young whale on a journey of discovery as he experiences his first day at sea on his own! He swims, explores, and makes friends in his marine habitat, and then returns home to his mother.

Fabulous Fishes by Susan Stockdale

Fabulous Fishes is a rhyming picture book that is wonderfully illustrated with brightly colored fish. The book describes different types of fish with simple rhymes. The last two pages describe each fish and the oceans in which they are found.

This is a really fun book about a squid who thinks he’s the biggest thing in the ocean. He compares himself to all the animals in the ocean that are smaller than him, like the crab, octopus and turtles. Little does he know that there is an animal bigger than him that eats him!

Here is a link to some storytime ideas for this book. https://www.kidssoup.com/craft-and-resource/story-time-im-the-biggest-thing-in-the-ocean-crafts-and-activities

Here’s a link to NOAA Fisheries’ Education Resources which are compiled from NOAA experts and partner organizations to provide high quality, science-based materials and activities for students and teachers interested in exploring the science behind marine resource management and conservation.

http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/educators_students/education.html

Here’s a guide to Greater Atlantic Fish Species.

https://www.greateratlantic.fisheries.noaa.gov/educational_resources/seafood/fish/

Here’s an Itsy Bitsy ocean book children can create.

http://www.kidzone.ws/kindergarten/learning-letters/ib-book-ocean.htm

Here’s a fun activity featuring oceans zones and layers of the sea with a hands-on science project.

http://www.kcedventures.com/blog/layers-of-the-ocean-under-the-sea-science-activities

Category:

Biology (Life Science), Ecology, General Science

Tagged with:

Learning About the Rainforest

Learning about all the colorful animals, insects, and plants in a rainforest make for a fun storytime theme!

The children really enjoyed The Frog With the Big Mouth by Teresa Bateman. It’s a humorous tale about a little Argentine wide mouthed frog that goes around the rainforest to brag about his fly-eating abilities. At the end of the book there are notes about the Toco Toucans, Coatis, Capybaras, Jaguars and Argentine wide-mouthed frogs, also known as Argentine horned frogs.

The Parrot Tico Tango by Anna Witte is a wonderful cumulative rhyme in which a greedy parrot snatches delicious fruit from his animal friends in the rainforest until he can hold no more.

I used the book Rain Forests by Nancy Smiler Levison with a flannel board activity for the preschoolers.

I handed out animals, insects and plants mentioned in the book and read the pages about the four layers of the rainforest: emergent, canopy, understory and the forest floor.

As I read about each layer, I invited the children to put the corresponding trees, plants, and animals on the flannel board. The preschoolers really enjoyed learning about the animals in each layer and helping to create a rainforest.

Here are two more nonfiction books about the rainforests:

Wow! Rain Forest Animals by Carolyn Franklin