The Amaryllis Inquiry Phase 1

Amaryllis bulbs were donated to the Kindergarten classrooms by one of our Vice Principals early January. The children's curiosity was peaked as they observed these bulbs. The children sketched the bulbs in their Inquiry books, and discussed with their peers what these bulbs could be? Many children thought that it would grow to become a flower.

The children were asked what we should do with the bulbs and many felt we should plant them in soil and give it water so it could grow.

big white bulb

brown bulb with big roots

small brown bulb

We labelled the different pots with the types of bulbs we had planted  The children predicted that big bulbs would grow big flowers, and the different colours of the bulb meant the flowers would be different colours.

We had some left over bulbs and we asked the children what we should do with them. One student wanted to place the bulb in just water with no soil and see what would happen.

And then they wanted to leave one bulb in a container and save it so they can plant it in the Spring.

NOT A BOX

At the Construction centre we decided to replace the traditional building blocks with boxes of all various shapes, and sizes to see how the children would engage with these materials. We also added some reading materials about shapes.

Initially...

 

The students explored with the boxes by dumping them on the ground

 and then searching for the "right" type of boxes for their creations.

 

 

The students then started to see what they could build with these boxes:

 

They started stacking...

 

 

and built a ROCKETSHIP!

 

We read a story to the class to provoke their thinking...

 

Using this book and others available to them, students began delving deeper into their design process

 

 

Here the students are building the tall building featured in the above book.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Playdough and Shapes

Playdough has returned to our classroom and the children are very excited! Along with traditional playdough toys such as rolling pins, 2 dimensional attribute blocks were also made available for the children to use. Here is an example below of how a student used the shapes in combination with the the playdough.

This student used her hands and the rolling pin to roll out the playdough and then the cutter to cut pieces of dough to place on the attribute blocks to make "SHAPE CAKES"

Fun stories!

 

Here are two books we have enjoyed at school.