Colorado Academic Standards Online

Supportive Teaching Practices/Adults May:

1. Provide a variety of materials and objects (i.e., solids and liquids) to encourage children to observe, manipulate, sort, and describe physical properties (e.g., size, shape, color, texture, weight) using their five senses as well as simple tools (e.g., magnifiers, balance scales, funnels).
2. Provide opportunities for children to explore changes in matter (e.g., solids and liquids) when adding heat or cold, when mixing ingredients during cooking, when adding items to liquid (e.g., oil, pebbles).
3. Provide each child with materials for experiments.
4. Display child observations, predictions and projects.

Examples of Learning/Children May:

1. Investigate changes in liquids and solids when substances are heated, cooled, combined etc.
2. Predict outcomes when altering materials (liquids and solids) and record using journals, charts, graphs, technology or drawings.
3. Participate in experiments, ask how and why questions.
4. Draw connections between classroom experiments/investigation and real world experiences (e.g., “The water turned to ice like the lake next to my house because it was cold”).

Supportive Teaching Practices/Adults May:

1. Provide opportunities for children to explore motion (e.g., fans and scarves, ramps and toy cars).
2. Provide opportunities for children to investigate energy (e.g., heat, light, sound; investigate shadows, sort musical instruments and discuss different sounds made by particular movements; explore transparent properties on a light table).
3. Provide opportunities for children to record observations in the changes of matter (e.g., ice melting at the sensory table).
4. Facilitate inquiry by asking how and why questions to encourage children to make predictions and chart results.

Examples of Learning/Children May:

1. Discover the higher the incline in a ramp (in block area) makes the car go farther.
2. Explain that some magnets pull away and some come together.
3. Identify when a change in matter occurs (ice melting, icicles forming, etc.).
4. Identify how and why things move (e.g., using a balance, pushing structures over, how fast different objects move).
5. Ask questions related to why things happen.

Supportive Teaching Practices/Adults May:

1. Provide opportunities for children to engage with live animals and plants along with toy/stuffed animals and plans and photographs/pictures throughout the classroom.
2. Read books about living and nonliving things, inquire about how we know if something is living or not.
3. Display worm farms, bird feeders, caterpillar/butterfly habitat, fish tank for observation.
4. Watching the fish, observe and discuss the movement of the gills, explaining this is how fish breathe under water.
5. Provide opportunities for children to use different materials (technology, journals, drawings, etc.) to observe living things.

Examples of Learning/Children May:

1. Match photographs of different habitats to the things that occupy them (i.e., worms live in the ground; fish live in water).
2. Sequence a series of photographs/pictures of a plant’s growth.
3. Sequence a series of photographs/pictures of the life cycle of a butterfly from caterpillar to chrysalis/cocoon to butterfly.
4. Document the life cycle of living thing.
5. Recognize that living things require water, air, food.

Supportive Teaching Practices/Adults May:

1. Provide opportunities for observation and investigation of the characteristics of animals and plants over time.
2. Take nature walks.
3. Encourage children to identify similarities and differences between living things and document what each need to survive.
4. Provide opportunities for children to explore available outdoor habitats.
5. Provide opportunities for children to help feed the classroom pet, water the plants, etc.

Examples of Learning/Children May:

1. Identify and describe through a variety of modalities the changes in living things overtime (e.g., bears hibernate when it is cold outside).
2. Investigate living things by caring for animals and plants in the classroom.
3. Document the human life cycle - babies grow into children, children grow to adults, adults get older.

Supportive Teaching Practices/Adults May:

1. Engage children in exploring natural objects such as small rocks, soil, leaves, sand and other objects.
2. Provide soil and containers for planting.
3. Display rocks, stones and pebbles of different shapes and colors for sorting.
4. Ask questions and make comments that lead children to observe closely and think about how they could find out more.
5. Encourage children to compare and contrast types of earth materials.
6. Encourage children to ask question and seek answers through active exploration
7. Provide a variety of materials for children to document observations (e.g., tablets, computers, notebooks, poster paper).

Examples of Learning/Children May:

1. Ask and pursue questions through simple investigations and observations of natural objects.
2. Explore rocks, soil and sand using a magnifier.
3. Use sense and simple tools to explore earth materials.
4. Discuss evidence from investigations and observations.

Supportive Teaching Practices/Adults May:

1. Take nature walks to observe weather conditions.
2. Talk about weather conditions daily.
3. Provide opportunities to sort pictures of activities, clothing and toys according to the types of weather and seasons they correspond to (e.g., sled with snow, sunglasses in summer).
4. Talk about things that can be found in the day or night sky (e.g., sun, moon, clouds, stars).

Examples of Learning/Children May:

1. Match types of clothing or activities to seasonal weather conditions (e.g., we use an umbrella when it is raining; we wear boots when it snows; we wear hats and gloves when it is cold outside).
2. Discuss current weather events that affect the community.
3. Observe and describe different types of clouds and moon phases.
4. Describe differences in weather patterns and day vs. night via drawing, dramatization or words.