Interactive Science Notebooks

So I decided to try and implement these this year. Still not exactly sure what the difference is in a science notebook and a science journal. I know with older kids they can take notes as they are working-with the little ones, that does not work so well. Our school requires title pages with a specific format in all our journals-name, grade, teacher, school, year--that was a traumatic experience for them in itself! We did not even tackle the Table of Contents yet. Sometimes I really think people do not understand Kindergarten-but I digress.

We personalized our notebooks in a very easy, quick way--with stickers!

And then we did our first experiment. It was called the Gobstopper Experiment which the kids copied as their title. Again, very simple--we put Gobstopper candies (who knew they were real, I thought they were a Willy Wonka invention!) into a bowl of water. We predicted what would happen and then observed and recorded like scientists what actually did happen.

Here are their notebook entries:

If nothing else it certainly got them interested in doing science. They beg me to do an experiment every day now! I wish we had time for that in our schedule. The really cool this was that we did this at the end of the day and I just cleared their bowls over and put them in our sink. I forgot to dump out the water that evening. So the next morning when I came in I put the stopper in the sink to catch the candies and poured out the water. The candies disappeared! They actually dissolved as I poured them out. I had to save the rest to show the kids when they got there!