Co-op Science - Solids, Liquids, Gases

Last semester I was teaching science classes through one of my co-ops.  Part of the reason in picking our new science curriculum was because I felt like science is like math.  There should be a logical progression of learning rather than random lessons here and there on unrelated subjects.  I wanted to continue to offer the science classes, but in a way that complemented our new curriculum.

The way I set up science for this semester is that I teach a class roughly every 2 weeks on a new chapter in our book.  On the weeks in between we do extra lessons, activities, and experiments to expand on what we learned in the co-op class.  I also send home a Parent Packet full of ideas so that the students in my class can also work on things at home.  I look at this as the best of both worlds.  My kids get to experience a collaborative group setting to learn the basics of each chapter, and then get personalized one on one experience at home to go into each chapter in more depth.

I asked the families to work on the first chapter (Organizing Things into Categories) on their own at home and last week at our first meeting, we worked on the next chapter together.  This is what we did at our group class - I'll post on our individual lessons later!

Solids, Liquids, Gases Co-op Class

Book: 

What is the World Made of?

Group Activity: Solid, Liquid, Gas Object Identification and Sort

I had a large box (larger than pictured!) of items from around my house that the students, working as a team,  had to sort into 3 different plastic shoeboxes labeled Solid, Liquid, and Gas.

Science Notebook: Trifold notebook journaling solid, liquid, gas

The kids made a tri-fold notebook.  The inside of each flap had pictures, examples, and characteristics of each state of matter.

Breakout groups: Worksheet, Card Sort, Object ID

I had laminated sorting cards (found at TPT), and a worksheet for the kids to work on (also TPT).  They rotated between those and doing the sorting activity from above independently.

The class was about 1 hour and had about 10 students ranging from 5-8 plus a couple of preschool aged younger siblings.  All in all it was a success and I'm looking forward to my next class!

Thanks for reading!

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Updated to Add:  See our extension activities here!