Curriculum Focus and rationale: SCIENCE This topic provides opportunities for students to engage in their natural world through a range of hands-on activities, observing and questioning while learning about living things in their natural habitat. The Learning activities provide opportunities to improve visual and scientific literacy.

Duration: 1 day

Syllabus Outcomes

STe-1VA Shows interest in and enthusiasm for science and technology, responding to their curiosity, questions and perceived needs, wants and opportunitiesSTe-3VA developes informed atttitudes about the current and future use and influcec of science and technology based on reasonSTe-4WS Explores their immediate surroundings by questioning, observing using their senses and communicating to share their observations and ideasSTe-8NE Identifies the basic needs of living things

Syllabus Content

Students question and predict by responding to questions about familiar objects and events they are curious about in the natural and made environments (ACSIS014)Students plan and conduct investigations by sharing what they already know and how they could find out more about their questions relating to the natural and made environments; exploring and making observations by using their senses to gather information about objects and event in their immediate surroundings (ACSIS011, ACSHEO13)Living things have basic needs: Students describe what plants and animals, including humans, need to stay alive and healthy eg food, water and air; identify the needs of a variety of living things in a range of situations (ACSSU002)

Learning across the curriculumAll RHEEC programs base activities on the principles of 8 Ways Aboriginal Pedagogies.Sustainability: is concerned with the ongoing capacity of Earth to maintain all life. It provides authentic contexts for exploring, investigating and understanding systems in the natural and made environments. Relationships, cycles and cause and effect are explored, and students develop observation and analytical skills to examine these relationships to design solutions to identified sustainability problems.Critical and Creative thinking

Kindergarte RHEEC PROGRAM: GREEN DAY

Overview: Using outdoor spaces for curriculum experiences. Strategies include exploration of the features of and ways in which living things grow and change, and how living things depend on places in their environment to meet their needs.

Learning Activity One: Introduction to Green Day

Outline to day – where they are going, what they will do and caring for the environment. Safety near traffic and water, moving together, avoiding stings and bites, sun safety.

Resources:

Learning Activity Two: Eco-Spies on the Job

Counting spiders, insects and caterpillarsExplain the difference between spiders, caterpillars and insects. Use pictures/books. Ask students to predict where the most of each will be found, trees or shrubs. Demonstrate doing a tree shake and examining mini beasts with magnifiers. Instruct not to handle minibeasts for their own safety and that of the mini beasts. Allocate groups of students. Each group to count in a tree area and a shrub area.

Micro HikeIn pairs, equip students with a length of string approx. 2 metres long, a magnifier and ten coloured toothpicks. Demonstrate how students will place their string across roots of trees, around grasses and shrubs etc to make a micro trail. Using the hand lens and on hands and knees, students look for unusual or interesting spots, which they flag with a coloured toothpick. Students take turns creating a trail and sharing discoveries.

Resources:Drop Sheet, magnifiers, string, toothpicks, resource bos Eco Spies

Learning Activity Three: Threatened Species and Koala Games

Students will participate in the Threatened Species Game and the Koala Game. These games are designed to engage students to develop an understanding of human impact on native species and the importance of habitat

Resources:Equipment shed: props and costumes for games

Kindergarte RHEEC PROGRAM: GREEN DAY

Learning Activity Four: Who am I?

Students learn about native animals and their habitats. Using soft toys to represent native species, the student will be asked to search for native species in their habitats. The students will be given a set of clues.

Resources:Equipment shed: resource box for activity

Learning Activity Five: Bird Watching

Discuss habitat for birds, different food requirements. Plants – seeds, nectar… Animals – bugs, spiders, caterpillars, worms…This means different birds are attracted to different plants. Demonstrate use of binoculars to students. Discuss need for silence.

Camp seats, binoculars. School grounds and Nangirra Outdoor learning area

Kindergarte RHEEC PROGRAM: GREEN DAY