Making seed nests

During one of our guided activities today, several materials were laid out on the circle table waiting for the students: paper towels, cookie sheets, ziploc baggies, markers and a package of seeds.

Interest was soon sparked. "What are we doing here?" they asked ...

I sat with them and told them that we would start with the baggie. Students were given a plastic baggie and asked to write their name on it with permanent markers. Although it sounds like a simple concept ... only having 2 markers and 4 students and asking EVERYONE to write their name created some immediate discussion. Discussion such as, "You go first, then I'll go next," and "I want the rouge pas the bleu," and "Here, let me help you write your name."

They quickly made predictions about what we would be doing with the baggies, the paper towel and the seeds. One little guy even said, "the paper towel is to clean up the mess when we're done!" Too cute. Finally, after much discussion, they came to the conclusion that we would be planting the seeds. Of course, "Duh! Ms. Kidd! That's what you do with flower seeds!" To find out just how much they know, I asked them (straight up), "What three things do plants need in order to grow?" Sure enough, they answered with soil, water and sun. So, low and behold, without teaching this small group about plants (keep in mind that we have NOT been doing ANY sort of unit/theme on plants thus far), they already know so much! I later explained that we would be using the paper towel instead of soil so that we could watch it grow in the window before transplanting them. They made connections and said that the paper towel would be the nest, or the home for the seeds before we put them in the soil. Amazing.

 

This little guy waited very patiently for his paper towel to be completely immersed in the water tray. When asked how he knew that it wasn't all wet, he said, "It's a different colour over here." Then, when I asked him if he could do anything to make it go faster, he pushed his fingers onto the dry areas.

Students carefully selected 3 seeds from the bag to germinate in their paper towels. When I asked them why they thought I was stapling the baggies (I put some staples at the top, and some at the bottom of the bag), some answered that the seeds can't drown. Others said the obvious (or not so obvious to some), to keep them from falling out of the bag if they fall

 

 



Et voila! Our germinating seeds in their nests. When asked where they thought we should put the seeds to grow, some said in the hallway where it's light, some said on my desk because it's safe and others said by the sun. You'll notice a few without a 'nest' ... there were a few students convinced that you don't need a nest. Hmmm.

 

If you don't see another post about germinating seeds, it's because this activity failed to 'plant a seed of inquiry' ... haha. 

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My little scientists!

Back to routines ...

In all honesty, I was a little bit 'scared and nervous' for school to start back up again after the two week holiday. I thought, "What if the kids cry ... What if they come back and aren't potty trained ... What if they don't like me anymore ... " Then, as they got off the bus and made their way down the hallways (picture them running, with their school bags bouncing up and down on their backs) and I saw their little smiles beaming at me, I realized that this 'fear/nervousness' that I thought I was experiencing wasn't fear at all. Instead, it was probably sadness from NOT seeing them every day! Now that we're back into the swing of things, I can truly say that I didn't realize how much I had missed them during the holidays.

What we've been up to ...

This week, we turned into scientists. I found an experiment for Borax Snow Crystals online (click here for the recipe) and we began our first 'science experiment' of the year.

I started our afternoon circle by asking, "What does SCIENCE mean? What is SCIENCE?" And these were there responses:

We brainstormed what we could be possibly making with "hot water, powder and pipe cleaners" and I took a few answers from them. I then asked students to go to a table, find a sticky note and draw what they thought would happen ... a teacher (myself, the ECE and the EA) in the room helped 'scribe' their answers.



Lots of 'explosion' predictions!

We then left it overnight and had a discussion the next day about what happened. Students sat in a circle while I walked around slowly with it, they put on gloves and got to feel it, then they were asked to draw (again on sticky notes) what did happen. So cute ... some of them said that it turned into diamonds.

 




One says "road salt" and the other says, "it turned into ice cubes and glass"



Later, students used magnifying glasses to get a closer look, they compared it to real snowflakes and they put it on the overhead projector to see the light shine though it... From this little 'spark,' we continued with a snow inquiry for the rest of the week. We brought snow inside and made a snowman (of course they had to wear their gloves - they were quick to realize that just because they were inside didn't mean that the snow wasn't cold!), we made observations about how long it would take the snow to melt. In addition, we made pattern block snowflakes, read a book titled "Le plus beau des bonhommes," sang "La neige tombe" (lyrics are posted under songs and chants and we also sent it home in their blue duotangs) and we continued with the literacy and sequencing that we started before the holidays with this cute little poem:

Une boule de neige.

Deux boules de neige.

Trois boules de neige.

Un nez et deux bras.

Un chapeau et un balai.

Voici, mon bonhomme de neige.
 

Here, you see students working at 'making a snowman' ... carrot and all!

 

 

Tada! Although the carrot nose just wouldn't stay on! We also made predictions about how long it would take to melt:

Since many 4-year olds have a hard time with 'time,' I decided to go with a basic timeframe (long time - overnight or short time - before home time).

Next week, we're planning more 'winter sports' and 'winter clothing' activities ... With the NHL back up and running, I'm sure the kids will hear lots of 'hockey talk' at home. We live in a BIG hockey community where the most used excuse for uncompleted homework is "I had hockey last night" and it's a perfectly acceptable excuse. Anyways ... I'll start them with a question: "Aimes-tu jouer au hockey?" and see where it takes us. I had my boyfriend (bless his soul, honestly) make little hockey nets. So, I'm hoping that the kinders are at least a LITTLE interested in it. Otherwise, I'll have to lie to Mitch ...

TTFN,



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Our first inquiries!

The new FDK program is child-centered, developmentally appropriate and play-based. In our classroom, we focus on ‘inquiry’ … which means, we plan for tomorrow based on what the students are interested in and what their needs are today. This week, we had two really great ‘inquiries’ …

If you’ve ever tried to teach while a fly, a spider or a bee were in your classroom, you’ll understand that students are WAAAAYYYY more interested in insects than anything you have to say. So, we went with it. We trapped two wasps this week, put them into little glass containers, took out some magnifying glasses and set up a ‘science discovery’ table.

We asked questions like, “What do you see with the magnifying glass that you didn’t see before?” … and “What will happen to the wasp if we leave him in the jar? … How do you know?”  In planning for next week, I’m going to ‘revisit’ the wasp inquiry … I’m going to read “Les abeilles"

                                               (Click here for the link to Scholastic)

And we’re going to fill in our anchor chart (using as much French language as possible, sandwiching the two languages) using prior knowledge and our newly learned info from our inquiry and our read-aloud. I’m planning for this “mini-lesson” to take about 5 – 10 minutes … no longer than that. If students aren’t interested in it, we’ll cut it short.

 

I also have a cute ‘craftivity’ for students to complete, inspired by Kacey at Doodle Bugs Teaching Blog, which will look something like this:

I’ve cut out all the ‘pieces’ and students will be responsible for gluing the pieces together, including the stripes – this should turn out quite interesting! Heehee.

Our second inquiry began in the block area. My teaching partner read “If You Take a Mouse to School” by Laura Numeroff (Click here for a link to this story being read on youtube -  super cute link btw because it’s a child reading it). During centre time, a few of our students were building towers. When I inquired about their towers, one student said, “This is where the mouse lives like in our book.” Ding, ding, ding. Bells went off inside my head. I questioned further, and he went to go get the book. Sure enough, he was doing a fantastic job replicating what he had seen in the book. I asked him if it would help if he kept the book open and tried to ‘copy’ it to challenge himself. So he did.

 

Two of our kinders (one JK, one SK), looking at the book and trying to replicate it.

 

A few other students came by to see what the excitement was about. I encouraged some of the girls to ‘draw’ the mouse house. It seems that we have little architects and contractors in our class … drawing up plans, building according to the plan.

This is a picture that one of our JKs drew of the tower ... there's a little mouse in the picture too (how cute ... and yet, so detailed!)

Our next steps, as teachers … well, it’s time for us to get down and build towers!! Next week we’re going to build some towers, take pictures of our towers and challenge our little contractors to out-build the teacher. We can also use "wonder" questions in the block area to stretch their thinking and we can make connections to what's being done in the block area to other centres (i.e. write about it, draw it, create a playdough model, etc.. )

Have I said how much I love my job?

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