Snow and Ice Inquiry

This winter was long in coming to our school area. We waited all throughout the month of December without any snow falls. Luckily for us during the end of the January month brought a lot of snow for us to play in.

On the day after the first real big snowfall and declared snow day, the children came to school dressed for the weather - which was great to see. When I asked the students who had played outside the day before, to my dismay only two students replied that they had played outside in the snow for a little bit. Fresh snow is the best time to play outside for hours. So we didn't undress and get ready for indoor activities that day - we prepared to go outside and plat in the snow.

As several students have been intent on building marble runs at the block centre, I proposed the question: "Can we make a maze - similar to your marble runs - outside in the big field?"

We had a bit of a whole group discussion about mazes. Some students had no idea what a maze was, however as we added to our schema more students began to visualize what a snow maze might look like.
"A maze has lines to follow."
"I saw dead ends."
"It's very, very long."
"I've been in a corn maze before. I got lost."
"How do we make a dead end?"

As we headed out, some students kept their attention on making mazes, while others just wanted to play in the snow, burying themselves, trying to make a snowman, making snow angels. This was ok with us as educators, knowing that these little ones rarely get the chance to just explore snow from a playful point of view.

Making mazes and snow angels in the freshly fallen snow.

Burying a friend in the snow.

Digging in the snow to see what id underneath.

We feel it is important to allow the students to have extended periods of playtime outside in all weather conditions, as the country we live in allows for all these experiences. Throughout the week as more snow graced our playspace we continued to ensure the students had long periods of time to play in the snow.

Making a snow train and travelling to far away places.

Building a snow castle. Putting a flag on top.

Making a door for everyone to come in.

During the week we engaged in several science experiments: How sticky is the snow in different weather conditions. This question came to us as on the very cold days the children noticed that they couldn't make a snowball to roll and make bigger. They experimented with throwing the snow in the air.
"It doesn't stay together."
"Look Ms. Clark it's falling apart."
"I can't throw it far."

The children have been wondering about polar bears within the classroom and while outside they decided to try their hand at building a den/igloo for polar bears. This activity had the children working on figuring out how to get the snow to pack hard enough into the buckets so that when they turned them over they could get out a shape to build with.

Packing the snow into the containers.

Carrying ice blocks over to our structure.

While working with the buckets of snow the children were quick to point out the various 3-D shapes they were making.
"I made a cone."
"This one is a rectangular prism."
"I think this is a cylinder."
When ask what shape they want to make for the floor of their igloo - all the children replied with a circle.

Creating the circular base for the den/igloo.

As they began to make the igloo, placing snow bucket after snow bucket beside each other, many of our younger students were able to count the snowcastles lined up. This depicted how they could count using one-to-one correspondence.

Counting the snowcastles.

As the students worked through this very important scientific investigation process of planning, experimenting, and problem solving they began to see the fruits of their work become a visible structure. By the time it was time to go inside (as some of our kiddos were becoming cold) they had completed the base of the igloo - learning that each "snowcastle" needed more snow to fill in the gaps. We examined the bricks on the school to see how the bricks were held together.
"The bricks have that grey stuff."
"It's cement"
"What can we use?
"I know - let's use snow!"

How do we get the 2 shapes closer together? 

Research lead us to fill the gap with snow.

We must always realize that lots of our curriculum can take place outside. Using the children's play, we can find the curriculum expectations to support and extend their learning.

Planets, Outer Space, and the Moon

I have been attempting to get to this post since the end of December, and am glad to finally publish it for sharing. Unfortunately at the end of the year, just before the break, we had our technical reps into the school and they re-imaged all our I-Pads including the one I take all my pictures on and although I thought I had made a copy of all the photos and saved them to my Google Drive I was unpleasantly surprised to see that many of the photos have disappeared. This was a lessoned learned for me - back up all photos regularly!

For the month of December the students started showing an interest in Space and Travelling there by rocketship.

We found several larger boxes and allowed the students to design and cut out their spaceship as they saw fit. We encouraged them to make plans before using the scissors to cut out the windows.

Once the rocket was ready for play the children all wanted a turn to fly into space to see what they could see. This was a good exercise in learning how to take turns so that all interested were able to have their fair turn inside the ship to look at the galaxy. As the student climbed into the rocketship another student closed the door, while a third student help the window shut. As the on-lookers performed the count down 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1-Blast Off!, the window was opened and the "astronaut" looked out into the galaxy and told us what they saw.

"I see the Moon"
"I see Saturn and more planets"
"I see the milky way"
"I see dark"

Making a space Station from a plan.

Researching the Solar System on the I-Pad.

Creating the Solar System on mural paper.

Taking our time to write the names of the planets.

As the days went on several of the students showed an interest in creating a mural of all the planets in our galaxy. We used the I-Pads to research some of the planets and came across an image of the Solar System. The students wanted to recreate this on the mural paper to hang up in the Planet Corner. Working diligently they consulted the images on the I-Pad and tried to get the planets into the correct order.

Working collaboratively to create the mural.

Several other students were engaged in an art project creating a hanging display of all the planets in our Solar System. They created each planet and wrote its name to hang up. What a great way to incorporate authentic writing experiences.

KWL chart to begin our questions.

Documentation notes taken during Thinking and Learning TIme

Our Documentation Wall.

Watercolour space.

Others worked at the watercolour table to show their learning.

Working on watercolour painting.

Math-magician time.

Math-magician time.

The fun thing about having on-going inquiries throughout the classroom - students will pick up the theme throughout the day at various activities. This was seen when a number of students engaged in Math-magician time and were using 2-D shapes to create images of the planets.

Math-magician time.

With a particular interest in the moon at one of our morning meetings we discussed the things we know, and the questions we had about the moon. We then began to look through books and internet sites to gain more information about our questions - realizing that some of our theories and thinking were actual misconceptions. Always good learning along the way for all.

Creating the different phases of the Moon.

 We are reluctant to take down any of this documentation as the children are often coming back to the pictures and drawing they created to see what they created this year. We are hoping that by leaving it up the kiddos will find another avenue for research to spark this inquiry again.

Becoming "Math-magicians"

Throughout the month of November we have been discussing with the children how important it is to practice our math skills on a daily basis. We have been discovering together that math is everywhere. During our play many math concepts can be found, however every day we take time to have all the students engaged in math play. We call this time Math-Magician Time. We can all make magic with math.

Each student has the option to choose from a variety of manipulatives to show their learning and understanding of a range of mathematical concepts. We allow the children to choose their own manipulatives in order to develop self-regulating skills. We have found that moving from the "must-do" bins we used to do in the past allows the students to enter at their own level and increase the difficulty as needed.

Matching numbers on dominoes.

Making numbers with dominoes.

Playing math games.

Counting to 100 by 5s.

Using one-to-one counting.

Showing the number 7.

Making numbers with blocks.

Making our own dominoes.

Showing groups of numbers to 6.

Forming numbers with connectors.

Making up our own games - rock/paper/scissors.

Practicing counting with tally marks.

One-to-one correspondence.

Making our own 5-Frame. 

Counting to 10.

Showing what we know about numbers.

Following the math period we join back together at our meeting place to share some of the learning the teachers noticed as well as have the students share their thinking. We will often project some of the activities on the Smartboard where the students can come up and point to various aspects of their learning. This gives the students the opportunity to communicate orally with their peers and share in their interests.

Beautiful Stuff Project

During the months of September and October our class has participated in a Beautiful Stuff project. After reading a resource this summer Beautiful Stuff! Learning with Found Materials by Cathy Weisman and Lella Gandini I was inspired to have the students help create our own materials of Beautiful Stuff.

In the past I would have collected all the materials and bought several things from the Dollar Store for the children to use in the classroom for their creations (of course I still do frequent the Dollar Store). However this year I wanted to see if more children would take to the materials when they became part of the process.

In the middle of September, we sent home a letter to the families encouraging them to fill their bag with Beautiful Stuff. We gave them suggestions of things they might find around their house. Quickly the children filled their bags and brought them back to the classroom. As soon as most of the bags were returned we had a class meeting to share some of the things within the bags.

In order to make each child feel special for the objects they had brought in, we made a point to slowly open each bag one at a time and let the children oooh and aaah over the materials dicovered within. Opening all the bags took several days and lots of anticipation.

P.T. I see lots of colours.
C.L. I see different colours of blue.
A.H. There's pink and orange,
B.Z. There's a giant,
Ms. C. You mean this sphere is very big,
C.L. I see long things and short things.
C.Y. I see beautiful things.
C.L. A marble
T.T. I see lots of stars.
A.L. I see a prism.
Ms. C. What do you see that is special?
D.Z. I see a pattern.
O.Z. Princess

Once all the bags had been opened and all the materials were mixed together in our Beautiful Stuff basket, the next step was to sort through it. In small groups the children sorted the materials various ways. Floating things, soft things, hard things, pointy things, rolling things. In the end we decided as a class we would do a final sort using a colour scheme. All the yellows together, reds together, etc...

Sorting by sticky things, things that rolls, things that twist.

Finding different ways to sort our materials.

Making sorting rules.

Sorting by colour.

Once we had all the materials sorted into the various plastic containers, during a class meeting I proposed that we co-create a Beautiful Stuff Alphabet (inspired by Joanne Babalis). In the past I have always put up the Jolly Phonics letters for the children as a reference. This year I wanted them to take ownership in creating the important resources in their classroom. I collected all the bristol board pieces needed for this project and included the Jolly Phonics picture cues for each letter (I still feel some children need these references when beginning their writing experiences).

As the days went on our co-created alphabet was beginning to take shape. Every student had a chance to work with a letter of the alphabet and decide which materials they wished to use to create the letters.

Our co-created Beautiful Stuff Alphabet is proudly displayed in the classroom as a resource for writing.