SAS Where the Wild Things Are: Welcome to the Jungle!

This past Tuesday Kayla and I began the Science After School program with the primary students. We kicked off the program with me reading “Where the Wild Things Are”, this is the theme of this year’s program. After reading the story we made binoculars and got on our very own magic school bus and headed down the hallway to explore Africa. Along the way we discovered a variety of footprints that lead our group to the jungle.

The students were so excited when we got to Africa. There were five different animals (elephant, zebra, hippo, cheetah, and bats) that we talked about and had large paintings of Kayla and I talked about each animal and passed pictures of them around. We had zebra and cheetah skins that the students could feel and even put over their heads. These were definitely a big hit! We also had a bat cave that the students could crawl into. One thing I would definitely change about our lesson is to only allow two or three students into the cave at once, that way the chance of behaviour problems would be reduced.

When we finished discovering the animals in Africa we got back on our bus and headed back to the United States. In the classroom we drew pictures of at least three of the animals we explored. Some students had no trouble at all doing this while others needed a little more encouragement to stay on task.

Overall I thought the lesson went great. Although it was time consuming to prepare for, I had a lot of fun coming up with things to do and actually teaching it. I think that Science After School is a great program and that the students will enjoy what my peers will be teaching throughout the next three weeks!