Learning about the desert and its ecosystem can help children best understand Earth Science. This week we learned about the Mojave Desert, the desert tortoise, burro, cactus, and the plants of the Mojave.

Many people only think of animals when they learn of ecosystems, but in reality, an ecosystem has animals, plants, and NON-living things too. 

This week in our Steam Stations we learned about a Desert Biom and about plants and textures. There are a lot of opportunities to learn and design when doing Steam Stations. We set up our environment to encourage children to test our new ideas through free play.

LETTER Zz

Experience Early Learning Curriculum provides the best Small Group Literacy activities. Each booklet they send is designed for success. We have the opportunity to simplify our activities to the child’s ability and age or challenge with our cube helping our older kids with syllables.

CACTUS SCULPTURE

Why do you think cactuses have spikes?

We invited the children to press one noodle onto a wet sponge and then attach it to another noodle. We asked how does it feel? Most of our kids said soft and mushy. They thoroughly loved this activity! We did not have toothpicks so we chose to make non-pokey cactuses.

We enjoyed learning about the Mojave Desert which is close to us. We investigated plant textures, drew in the sand and panned for gold. We discovered in the desert it can be really cold at night and really hot in the day.