PreK Science in English and Spanish: Science Journals: Getting Started

Our district recently started a thing where every student had to keep a journal. In PK it was decided to use the journal for science. At first, I thought, "Really??" But, then after thinking about it, I decided that it was a good idea. So for each science lesson, we came up with an activity that could go into the journal. Then, the students could keep this as a keepsake for their science learning in PK.
We used composition notebooks which can be found at a lot of different places. I bought some at the Dollar Tree for a buck. Of course, we just had to make some very cute labels to go on our journals. Here is what Debby came up with for our journals. And to help you get started on your journals, we decided to make the labels free for our followers (or guests).
This is the front cover label that we used. It is in color so you don't have to color anything. Just add names. I used Avery White Full Sheet Labels to run off the labels. I just cut them apart and stuck them on the front of the notebooks.

We really wanted to make the science journals special and wanted them to look like real books so we made a few more labels. We made a first page label to name the journal. We made it in black and white so that the students could make it their own by coloring it. I ran these off on just regular paper and then glued them in using a glue stick. You can use regular glue but it wrinkles the pages a bit. So I just use lots of glue sticks. You can have your parent volunteers glue these in if you are lucky enough to have some good helpers.

We also made a Table of Contents page if you want to use those. I do have to admit that I was kind of lazy getting these done. You can have your students write in the names of the subjects. I used two pages of these because I just put in the name of the subject such as Hot-Cold or Magnets and listed all the pages. I didn't write in each activity. If you use two pages, you will have 36 lines, one for each week of school.

After I started making the activities that go into the journals, I realized that I needed some way to keep unfinished work. Some of the activities took me a week to get finished. So I made these labels to go onto a snack sized plastic bag. I would just put in any unfinished work into the bag and put it in the science journal. Then, there would be no stress to get activities done all at once. This helped because my PKers didn't have the longest attention span.