Pirate and Mapping inquiry

This week we enjoyed having our caterpillar parents join us for the morning to participate and observe their children at "play". Some of the activities they witnessed seeing their kiddos do involved evading, writing, and a ton of oral language.

The story we read that sparked an interest.

For the past couple of weeks our kiddos have been interested in pirates and map making. After reading the story "Pirate Pete" the excitement around the carpet grew immediately. Without hesitation we encouraged several kiddos to make their own treasure maps. 

Several kiddos making their own treasure maps.

Ms Blundell put together a treasure map of our own that would lead the kiddos around the school in search of a final tasty treasure. The children begin their search with a quick lesson on reading a map and having to decode a clue. As all the kiddos wanted to participate Ms. Blundell took them in groups of five.  

Learning to read the map.

Finding the Start!

Taking the map with us so we won't get lost.

All the places we visited along the way.

This week we saw several groups of kiddos engaged at the carpet building their own pirate ship. With pirate hats on, some groups built big ships to allow all students a chance to jump aboard, while one day even Hop joined in on the sailing trip.  On another day, we saw a group build a pirate ship with a proper captains seat and gang plank for the "bad guys" to walk down. 

Pirate Ship with Gang Plank

Just the beginning of another ship.

Even Hop jumped aboard this day!

A captain steering the ship.

While the focus has been mostly on making treasure maps, a handful of kiddos delved into other maps with me this week. We looked at some examples of maps for the Toronto Zoo and tried to compare them to our kid made tea sure maps. We quickly noticed that both have pictures, lines/roads to follow, and a legend/words. 

Making our own maps.

If you have any maps at home that you could donate to our inquiry we would be very grateful if you could send them in next week. These could be maps of places you've been such as the zoo, Casa Loma, the subway, or a city map.