Ms. S's Kinders: Garter Snake Research

It started today with a simple story of what I saw at my farm on the weekend. I asked the Kiddoes if they remembered what animals can do in order to survive winter. I was pleased when they responded, "hibernate, migrate or adapt". I then proceeded to remind them of our first "5 clap" word we discovered which was hibernaculum. The Kiddoes remembered this was what a ball of snakes were called when they hibernated together. Well, I explained to the room, that with the warm weather, the snakes at our farm were waking up and sunning themselves on the lawn. I told them I realized this when I was walking down to the barn and stepped on a hibernaculum. This produced lots of laughter from the Kiddoes. When they asked what I did, I responded, "screamed!". "Why", they inquired? I explained I didn't know much about snakes and because of that, I was scared. One Kiddoe wisely pointed out, "well... if you know about them, then you won't be scared anymore." Thus, our project began. First we drew a chart and labeled it with "What We Know (K)", "What We Want To Know (W)" and "What We Have Learned (L)". This is similar to the way we began our research with 'The After Christmas Tree'.