Kindergarten Next Generation Curriculum

In Unit 1 Weather in Our World, students explore weather patterns on Earth and the sun’s role in warming Earth.

• Students use pinwheels to observe windy weather and heat lamps in an experiment to observe how heat affects ice.
• Students use cotton balls, sequins, colored paper, and string to create a model of the water cycle.
• Students observe and record weather patterns in their geographic area and then create a flip-chart to compare and contrast seasonal weather.
• Students use first-hand observations to explore the sun’s role in warming Earth. They investigate the temperature variation among different materials and carry out an experiment using lamps into the temperature difference between objects in the sun and in the shade.
• Students use different colored paper, aluminum foil, pipe cleaners, and other materials to design a prototype solution that helps people stay cool on a hot, sunny beach.

In Unit 2 Living Things Change, students explore life on Earth, comparing living and nonliving things and investigating what living things, including humans, need to survive.

• Students gather information from books, videos, and dialogue to answer the question: What is a living thing?
• Students create models of adult sunflower plants and then grow bean plants from seeds to observe what they need to live and grow.
• Students create habitats for crickets that meet their needs and then create a model of a forest habitat.
• Students use photographs and text to investigate the relationship between the building materials people use from their natural environment to create shelters.
• Students come up with different solutions, in the form of drawings, to communicate ways people can reduce human impacts on the environment.

In Unit 3 Making Things Move, students investigate how pushes and pulls are forces that change the motion of an object.

• Students gather information from books, photographs, videos, and dialogue to differentiate between pushes and pulls.
• Students use marbles of different sizes and ramps to carry out an experiment in which they observe how the distance a cup moves across the floor changes when it is pushed with a large force compared to a small force.
• Students use marbles, ramps, and materials with different textures to observe how different surfaces can change the motion of a rolling marble.
• Students use marbles, materials with different textures, ramps, and other materials to engineer a structure that guides a marble from one place to another as fast as possible and then stops its motion.