Life Science Spine for 1st grade?

[kls126s]

I'm working on my schedule for Life Science for first grade, but I'm having a hard time finding a book like to use for the spine for the plants section. I'm thinking of something like Plant Parts but I'd like it to cover a bit broader spectrum - habitat, types, ? Has anyone looked at the DK book Plants?

 

Any other ideas for a spine for this unit? I'm planning eight or nine weeks on this unit.

[kls126s]

Bumping up hoping that all you late night moms have the perfect book for me...;)

[Aletheia Academy]

at the selections for plants at www.easyclassicalcurriculum.com. They have a whole 1st grade prgram with lesson plans, but you can buy the books they recommend separately at Amazon or RR.

 

HTH!

[Tami]

Take a look at ScienceWorks by Evan-Moor. Everything is in there - hands-on, reproducible mini-books, teacher background, extension ideas. It's both fun and easy to use. You can view the whole book online. I don't know if I've ever had anyone NOT like these nifty little units - so certainly worth a peek. They seem to click with a variety of learning and teaching styles.

 

Take a look at Plants or Habitats.

 

Have you considered taking nature center classes or nature walks? Other ideas are identifying and pressing flowers and leaves to use in making notecards, candles, etc.

 

HTH!

[Nestof3]

The DK book is a little advanced, in my opinion, for a first grader. It can surely be used, but much of the vocabulary would be advanced, if you know what I mean.

 

Life science spines that I like are:

 

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Usborne Complete First Book of Nature

http://www.amazon.com/Usborne-Complete-First-Book-Nature/dp/0746005636/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1209818317&sr=8-1

 

It covers birds, trees, flowers, butterflies/moths, wild animals, fish, creepy crawlies. This would help you with your plants/trees. This would be good for K-1st in my opinion. I would surely supplement with great books about plants. I can recommend some if you'd like.

 

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The Usborne Living World Encyclopedia

http://www.amazon.com/Usborne-Living-World-Encyclopedia-Encyclopedias/dp/0794500056/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1209818461&sr=1-1

 

It covers living things and their environments. The book groups animals and plants by their environment. This would be great for studying the habitats. This book is more in-depth than the other Usborne, but very nice for 1st grade as well.

 

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The Usborne Illustrated Encyclopedia -- The Natural World

http://www.amazon.com/Natural-World-Usborne-Illustrated-Encyclopedia/dp/0746016891/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1209818788&sr=1-1

 

This book has 7 large pages devoted to plants and trees. They are in-depth pages, nicely done. It also covers animals and habitats (biomes), so it would make a great life science spine as well. It includes some experiments as well.

 

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This is the best spine for plants I've seen. It has fabulous, large photos!It covers all the basics.

 

Plants -- The Dorling Kindersley Picturepedia

 

Unfortunately, it is out of print.

Here's one:

http://www.biblio.com/books/76770442.html

 

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I also have a book titled Childcraft: The Green Kingdom which really is a nice, exhaustive study of plants for children. The pictures are a little dated, but the text is nice.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Green-Kingdom-Childcraft-How-Library/dp/0716601915/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1209819332&sr=8-1

[kls126s]

Thanks, nestof3, for taking the time to give such a thorough answer! That's just what I was hoping for. And I noticed that Jessica has the Childcraft plants book on her Trivium Academy schedule on Lulu, so I will definitely get my hands on that. We'll do lots of other library books and nature walks and stuff, but I was looking for a good spine book.

 

I am so thankful for this board. I'm pretty new at this, and I've learned a lot from all of you and think my choices are much stronger for what I've learned here. Thanks, all!

[Trivium Academy]

Plants resources we'll use next time:

 

- Seed-Babies by Margaret Worley

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=_60XAAAAIAAJ&dq=Seed-babies&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=Un3Lbn__TK&sig=yWXhrXTt5xbV7xqC8V34RroXybo

In fact, we'll read this next year during our botany lessons, it's only 75 pages so you can print it out

 

We're also going to study agriculture within botany, so we also have books about farms.

 

We're going to go through the plant kingdom classification and explain each order so our studies will be centered around that (vascular and non-vascular).

 

I have a wonderful book called Essential Atlas of Botany by Barrons (ISBN 0764127098) which provides tons of graphics and illustrations so I can explain the more simpler concepts and provide visuals for them. Plus, dd7 has surprised me too often with more difficult questions so I prefer having an upper resource that provides the answers. This approach is not for everyone, but I can filter out what to address at her level and what to leave for the next cycle.

 

We also have Eyewitness Plant, Eyewitness Tree- these are helpful for more illustrations which at the K-3 level, I've found very helpful in our nature studies and general curiosity. THe Handbook of Nature Study by Comstock has been very useful too. We're also going to be planting a naturalist garden to accomplish two goals in one- studying the plants we grow and creating an environment for further nature studies (plus the beauty of it).

 

Hope this helps, it's probably too much but I figured I'd share anyways.