How 'bout them apples?!

Apples, apples and more apples.

I think this is a 'blogger-no-no' but my post is going to be mostly pictures. It's hard to explain INQUIRY without pictures!!

Here are some of the fun things we did during centre/community time this week:

1. We read stories about 'apples':

Click Here for Link to Scholastic

 

  

Click Here for Link to Renaud-Bray 

Click Here for Link to Amazon

2. We took a survey:

I explained the chart, reading the French words and making reference to the coloured magnets and pulled students names out of a baggie. As their name was called, they came up to the white board to choose which kind of apple they like best. In addition, they had to tell me the colour that they chose. We also counted the results in French and realized that green apples are the most popular kind of apple in our class!

3. We wrote apple sentences:

I prepared the following document (Click here for download) which includes our shared reading (which was later put on chart paper), sentence strips used to label pictures, and two writing activities. It's not very fancy, but it's the 'gist' of our 'teacher directed' centres this week.

**The obsessive-compulsive part of me just wasn't satisfied with this 'simple' version of our unit, so I created a fancy one and uploaded it to Teachers Pay Teachers. **

Students were not given examples of what the final products should have looked like and this allowed for some creativity in the activities. For example, there were apple die-cuts already made, but crayons were also made available along with pencils and markers. The result - no two pages looked alike! :)

4. Painting with apples:

I LOVVVVE this example. Inquiry at it's finest ... Green apple, orange apple, green apple, green apple, orange HANDPRINT?! Hmm ... In my 'instructions' for this centre, all I said was that there was paint in a shallow dish and there would be apples to use to put the paint on the paper. Stereotypically, you see this project look like beautifully placed apples stamped in perfect patterns. Well, when you don't tell students HOW to do it, they form their own interpretations of what to do. And by all means, it's not wrong ... the point of the painting apples activity was simply to explore the medium of paint with something other than a paintbrush. Obviously, this student in particular realized that her hands could also be used as a tool. A simple, yet astonishing discovery when you're 3 and a half years old.

When I put all of the students' work together on an inquiry board, this is what we get:

 

 

I still have to add 'words' and 'commentary' to the inquiry board, but for the most part ... this sums up our week in kinderland!

 

Happy Turkey Weekend everyone!!

 

TTFN,

 



Pin It

Apples and Worms

Where do I start?!

Okay, honestly … where do I even begin? There has been SO much happening in our Kindergarten class these past few weeks that I’m not sure where to start! This blog post will be a mix of things as I go through my Ipad and remember all of our fun happenings!

By the way, times like this make me realize just how invaluable the Ipads are to documentation for assessment purposes. I keep saying, “Oh ya!” and “Oh, wow I forgot about …” as I scroll through the camera roll. As the year goes on, I’m hoping to become more tech-savvy when it comes to apps but for now … the camera is coming in handy!

Yet another inquiry …

APPLES AND WORMS!

During snack time, one of my little guys pulled out a MacIntosh apple that had a little brown spot on it. He held it up and said, “Does a worm live in here?!” I told him that a worm probably didn’t live in his apple (I didn’t want to scare him from ever eating apples again!), but questioned him about it!

Next week, we’re going to focus on apples a little bit more. Some of our centres will feature apple patterning, apple poems (en français), counting and sorting by colour and of course – eating! Our school is fortunate enough to have a fully functioning kitchen, so I’m hoping (with the support of administration, of course) to give the children a true-making-learning-hands-on-and-as-real-as-can-be-experience by baking some apple crisp! If I peel the apples and give the students some plastic knives to dice them, it might not be as impossible as it sounds. Plus, they’re going to LOVE eating it!

After the 'worm in the apple' conversation, I decided to purchase some very REAL looking worms and soil for our sensory bin. The kiddies had a blast putting soil in their pails and digging for worms. The custodian on the other hand … not so much. Heehee.

TWO BOYS PLAYING IN THE DIRT ... ALTHOUGH I DON'T LIKE TO LIMIT CETNRES, THIS ONE HAD A MAXIMUM OF THREE STUDENTS ALLOWED AT ONE TIME.

Here are some pictures of some other learning centres in our room: Literacy Centre and Calendar Centre.

 

LITERACY CENTRE - PRACTICING NAMES - AND NOT JUST THEIR OWN!

 

 

CALENDAR CENTRE

 

Let me explain 'the Calendar Centre' ... with the focus OFF of long circle-time, where students are sitting for extended periods of time doing calendar, we decided that having a centre for the weather bear would be a better choice for our students. After dressing “Mr. Ours” for the rain (umbrella and all), they spun a spinner to dress him up for other seasons too. At this centre, we rotate the weather bear and the calendar and have students manipulate the date and the days of the week.

That's all for now! Stay tuned to see how our 'apple inquiry' goes!

TTFN,

 

Pin It