Our costumes, ourselves

I love the costumes kindergarteners choose. As a chance to step out of themselves and to take on a role, costume choices reveal so much about a child's sense of self. Many boys, and some girls, choose costumes that are powerful and strong, such as superheroes and ninjas. Some students choose to be scary, or beautiful, or cute. Some choose costumes of helping professions, like firefighters and police officers. Are the costumes aspirational, or simply a reflection of how they were feeling when they picked it out?

What ever they choose, our students love to pretend to be someone else.

How does water move?

We are starting to explore the properties of water this week. The children are using tubing, funnels, turkey basters and squirt bottles to explore how water moves. 

As they explored, the children were quiet, thoughtful and focused. 

Even while discovering how far a jet of water can squirt, the researchers were able to stay calm and kept the water in the table. 

Our explorations continue!

Building and balancing

We introduced a new learning material today- Kapla blocks. These are thin and small pieces of wood that are remarkably sturdy when stacked. The magic is in the sheer number we have...1000 of them!

The children got straight to work using the success criteria of building strong and steady and making a plan. Look at the concentration in their faces!

Violet discovered that to build steps, you have to start with five and use one less on each level. She is starting to understand less, more, and subtraction. When she was done, she taught Haley and Lily how to make steps too. 

During our consolidation time today, the children learned about the importance of balance in their buildings. Not just physically balancing blocks, but also coming up with a symmetrical design to make it sturdier. 

We can't wait to see how much te children can learn with these blocks!

Lovely Fall

Autumn is truly the best time of year in our area. The air is crisp, there are no mosquitos to pester us, and usually there is lots of cool sunshine. 

We all know this year the weather is a little different...so we've been grabbing our coats whenever the sun shines and heading to the Green Classroom. 

The children are charmed by the milk weed fluff filling the air. 

We got out the trowels and did a little fall clean up in the garden beds. 

On Monday, we went looking for bugs. We discovered that most of them have gone to bed for the winter already. 

We managed to find a few slugs and worms, and this was a source of delight and wonder. 

Inquiring into the Arts

Colour is like magic to young children. Put two or more colours together and "Poof"! There's something from nothing.

We decided to encourage and provoke learning in this area by offering an experience to mix coloured water using eyedroppers.

At first, the children were tentative, but they soon were exclaiming in delight when a new colour appeared on the mixing tray.

As the teachers observed, we noticed the activity wasn't just about making new colours. The children were using fine motor control to manipulate the eye droppers, and they experimented with fast and slow drops.

They also experimented with the tray itself. Could they fill up all the compartments? How much water was needed to fill the larger areas? Some students liked the organization of the small areas, while others delighted in great big swaths of colour. Their interactions with the materials revealed aspects of their artistic personalities.

We also observed the bystander effect. The children watching also participated by asking questions, offering advice, and giving instructions. In our room, we use a philosophy called social constructivism....basically we encourage the children to teach each other. In the art studio, this was in full effect!