Out of the ordinary

At the end of every day, our class has a share circle. We began the year, pulling teeth, just to make it through five minute! Now, we allot usually between 10-20 minutes every day. And we still don't have enough time. We have used this time for children to share their thoughts about the day, any wonders they have and anything they have learned that day. We have had some amazing conversations start from our share circle, as well as new inquiries in the class. We are now trying to focus our share circle on student work that they feel or we feel is a personal best. We have talked to the children about the meaning of personal best and that this could mean a piece of work they have worked really hard on or it could be a piece of work that is really out of the ordinary for that child. Today, we shared an out of the ordinary learning story. Please enjoy:

I was working with another student today when K.M. came to me with a piece of paper that had a circle drawn on it in pen.

K.M.- "There Ms.Stacey. That's my plan. Can I go make my picture in the art studio."

Ms. Stacey-"That's not a plan. That is a circle. It doesn't tell me what you are going to do or what kind of materials you are going to use." (We have been using plans all year)

She then went onto Ms.Danah.

K.M.-"What's a plan, Ms. Danah?"

Ms. Danah-"What a great question. It is when we draw the things that we want to do and where they want to go."

K.M.-"Ok. I want to make a plan so I can go in the art studio."

Ms.Danah-"Perfect. I see you have a circle. What is it?"

K.M.-"it's dirt. And I want trees."

Ms.Danah-"Ok. Draw the trees where you want them."

The conversation went on throughout some time. Afterwards, K.M. brought her plan over to me, along with Ms. Danah. They explained it all to me. I was amazed.

Ms.Stacey-"Wow! What a fantastic idea going and asking about plans. I didn't realize you didn't know what a plan was. I am so proud of you. Would you like to share this at share circle later?"

K.M.-"Yes!"

This is very out of the ordinary for her because she usually rushes through everything in order to move onto something else. To see her tKe her time, find another person to ask what a plan was, then to create the plan and follow through was a vast improvement for her. Here she is sharing her incredible work at share circle with Ms. Danah. She even explained everything really well to the rest of the class. Hopefully, this inspired other children to make plans and know that they can ask questions to clarify misunderstandings. 

Curriculum connection: 

Big ideas: 1. Children are effective communicators.

2. Children are curious and connect prior knowledge to new contexts in order to understand.

3. Young children have an innate openness to artistic activities.

New class pet

Today, while on my walk at recess, we found a baby turtle on the road. I had to bring it back. We just had a great turtle presentation at school a few weeks ago. The children would love it. I brought it back. We had a mid day meeting. I had the children sit in a share circle. 

"I have something special to share with you. We need to have a very quiet share circle."

After everyone was quietly sitting, I brought it out. Did it ever create a stir!

Stay tuned for more about our new turtle!

June 4, 2014

I have begun writing the continuation of our pet story many times and have gotten distracted. So here it is. Our turtle's story.

After we brought the turtle into the class, the children had many wonders. They decided to write them down so that we didn't forget anything that we were curious about. 

They also started to create a home for it.

Here is an up close and personal look. The children are amazed with him. They also decided, with my help of course, that they were not allowed to touch him. Some thought that it would be best to make signs to go with our turtle world too. 

They also did some research and found out that the turtle is a midland painted turtle. They researched on a website that asked them all kinds of questions. They had to observe the turtle and look closely at the details of its shell, belly, head, and markings. We also looked on a pamphlet that was given to us from the turtle rescue presentation. From all of that information, they determined the type of turtle he is. 

Throughout the next few days, the children observed our turtle. They also wrote down more wonders and drew some different observations. 

I presented another shell to the children a few days afterwards. It was one from my cottage. The kids were thrilled.

I also thought I would bring in some interesting books to read about legends of the turtle, how the turtle got its shell as well as some non-fiction books. 

We also went on a habitat walk. When we release our turtle, we want to make sure that it is in the appropriate habitat. We discussed shelter, water sources and food sources. They took their outdoor journals and drew their observations. When we got back, we discussed the habitats we watched. They loved the one with the stream and voted to call it the stream habitat.

So today, I announced that we were returning our turtle to the wild. The kids were sad but at the same time excited to see him out in his natural habitat. 

Ms. Stacey:"Where do you think the best habitat would be for our turtle?"

S.H.:"Down by the ocean!"

J.D.:"I think he'll like the sand and water there."

Ms.Stacey:"What do we know about our turtle? Where does he go the most in his turtle world in our class?"

M.H.:"He loves the long grass. I think we should put him in the stream."

S.G.:"Yes, it had long grass for shelter and water."

We found the perfect spot in the stream habitat. The kids gathered around quietly to say our good-byes and watch him. It was very exciting! 

I put him on a rock and we all watched. He loved it. He sat basking in the sun on the rock...

...until he decided he would check out the swimming. It was a little faster than he was used to but quickly got the hang of it and soon swam away under some long grass.

We followed the stream all of the way down to the river. The children wanted to make sure that he would have access to the big water. When we got down there, another adventure ensued!

Water snakes! The kids thought it was hilarious watching me run screaming away! 

So, our pet turtle is now back in its natural habitat. But the children have said they wish our turtle learning could continue. We still have so many questions to answer! Therefore, there will be more to come so stay tuned!

Play doh castle inquiry

Play Doh Castle Inquiry

 

April 28, 2014

 

            Shaylene and I created a beautiful display of our nature items on the back table today.  It was neatly arranged in a nice basket with all kinds of different containers that the children could use to sort their items into.  We were not sure how the play would end up looking, but thought this was a good start.  Well, it flopped!  Nobody went to it during thinking and learning time.  We discussed it again that evening.  We thought we should give it some time.  The next two days were the same.  The children were intrigued by it, but didn’t actually go there during thinking and learning time.  So, the discussion ended up around how we could fix that.  What could we add to make them go there.  The solution that we came up with was play doh.  That evening, we each made a batch of play doh.  The next day, it completely changed!

 

May 1, 2014

 

            It took a few minutes before the children noticed the play doh, but then it took off!  Children were making all sorts of things like balls, snakes, snowmen, and little houses. 

 

Ms. Stacey: “How are we going to take care of this play doh?”

S.F.: “We have to put it away each night so that it doesn’t go hard.”

Ms. Stacey:  “Ok.  That sounds good.  Just to let you know that this is all the play doh we are making this week.  If it goes hard, there will be no more.”

 

            The children were having a ball.  Then, S.F., A.W., and E.R. decided they would make a castle.  They started to make the tops of the towers. 

 

            That evening, the conversation continued around the new play doh/nature area.  We discussed the castle and what we could do to help enhance the learning.  I went online and found a book about castles that was above their level, but had great pictures.  I would show it tomorrow on the smart board.

 

May 2,2014

 

            During morning meeting, we looked at the castle book on our smart board.  The children decided that they loved the pictures.  This picture brought about a lot of discussion.

 

“What are the round parts for?”

“Why is it built in water?”
“How did they make the round parts?”

“How did they make it stay up in water?”
“How did they build it in the water?”

 

There were so many wonders!  After the meeting, we put the pictures up on the wall by the castle play doh area hoping it would spark some ideas.  S.F. went right over there and got to work.  Her and a few friends started to build, but were then called out to practice for the school play. 

 

The conversation that night after school revolved around bringing in items to help get their imaginations going.  We needed to find a way to bring writing into the inquiry and get some work from the children, not just building. 

 

On the weekend, I bought some picture frames.  We put them at the inquiry area.  We talked about them at our morning meeting, but the girls who were interested in the castle inquiry were away because of play practice again.  The rest of the week seemed to follow the same idea.  Finally, on Friday of that week, when we thought all hope was gone for the inquiry area, S.F. decided to draw a picture to go in a frame.  A.A. also made a picture with labels on it.  Here they are:

We figured our castle play doh inquiry was well on its way.  Wrong again!  There just didn’t seem to be any interest in it.  I tried to talk with some children about using other materials to build the castle and the play doh could act like the glue to hold it together.  We discussed our snowman hut building that we did.  T.D. seemed very excited about it. 

 

T.D.: “We can use egg cartons like we did in our snowman hut building contest.  Maybe we could win this time!”

Ms. Stacey: “Well, we are not having a competition this time, but yes.  You can certainly use the egg cartons.  Is there anything else we could use to help build it?”

S.F.: “What about some cylinders?”

Ms. Stacey: “Sure.  Why don’t you look around in our art studio to see what you could use.  I will come back in a bit to see what you have done.”

 

I left them, looked over in a few minutes and they were gone.  It went all the way until today, May 14^th with nobody coming to it.  I finally said this morning that I need to go into the inquiry and “play”.  I told the children at the morning meeting that I was going to the play doh and I was just going to play and try to come up with some ideas for building the castle.  S.F., A.W., LM.W., H.W, and R.H. said they were going to come with me. 

 

During thinking and learning time, I grabbed some egg cartons and started to put them together to make a big open cube.  H.W. helped me with the tape and coming up with ideas for the turrets.

 

H.W.: “What if we use some paper towel rolls?  That would work.”

Ms. Stacey: “What a great idea.  Do we have any?”

 

We looked but could not find any.  Then, S.S. came over and had an idea.

 

S.S.: “We can use the big small ones.”

H.W.: “And we can tape them together to make them taller.”

 

We worked together and ended up with the walls of the castle done and the four turrets.  That is when H.W. came up with the idea to put play doh along the top of the turrets in triangles to look like the bump parts of them.  We intended to keep them out (S.F., A.W., and LM.W., all helped with this) and let them try on the turrets, but I accidentally asked H.W. to clean up all of the play doh.  LM.W. noticed so I told her I would help make new ones after.

 

Throughout the day, numerous children decided to help out.  S.F. wanted to help with the draw bridge.  After I cut the egg carton walls to make one, she decided that it should be brown like wood.  LM.W. said that if we paint it in straight rows of brown, it would look like wood. Then we could use gold dots to make it look like nails. 

 

A.W.: “How can we make the chains to bring the drawbridge up and down?”

S.F.: “Maybe we can use string.”

LM.W.: “I think we should try chains. But how?”

Ms. Stacey: “Well, what did we do with our big castle that we made in our class?”

LM.W.: “We used rope, not string.”

 

Then, R.H. was playing at the play doh and created a little creature. He brought it over to me.

 

R.H.: “Ms. Stacey, we can make these to play with in the castle when they are all finished. They can be the people.”

Ms. Stacey: “That’s perfect.  That could be their face (a round bead in the middle of the head)”

R.H.: “Well, they are kind of like one-eyed aliens! Haha!”

 

 

So, the interest has finally come back.  It looks great. Hopefully, we can finish it up this week so that the kids have somewhere to play.

Our draw bridge has now been painted.  H.W. thought it would look great in brown and they (him and E.R.) painted it by making dots on it so that it would look like wood and natural.  The little spikes kind of things (don’t know what they are called, maybe we could research the names) on top of the turrets are now made as well.  H.W. made them out of play doh.  We are going to leave it out to let the play doh dry and harden.  I am excited to see how the children play with this after it is finished.

 

Self-portrait Inspiration

The other day, J.I. was drawing a picture of himself and his family. 

I realized that we have not worked on self-portraits or drawing of people this year. So, at the end of the day, Ms. Shaylene, Ms. Danah and I started to discuss this. Here is what we came up with. 

Our studio has been transformed from our Mother's Day area to a self-portrait studio. Ms. Shaylene, Ms. Danah, Mr. Patterson, Mrs. Hie, and myself did our own self-portraits before school to show and have on display. Mrs. Rogers is going to do one as well. 

We had a group meeting on the carpet to discuss all of the new areas in the class today. Of course, the new studio provocation caught their eyes. Instead of telling them what it is, we decided to let them explore it themselves. The children were intrigued. 

"I think this is Ms. Stacey!"

"I know this is Ms. Danah. She has glasses."

"And this is Mr. Patterson. His name is Dave and he signed his name Dave on the corner."

"But who is this?"

It was an interesting to listen to them and watch them as they used their own thoughts to figure the pictures out. When they returned to the carpet, I told them that we did self-portraits. 

Ms. Stacey: "What is a self-portrait?"

M.H: "It is a picture of yourself."

The children then went on to thinking and learning time. The self-portrait studio was packed! 

LM.W was hard at work glancing between mirror and sketch pad. 

R.H. was concentrating incredibly hard. He began by drawing a circle with dots for eyes, nose, and a line for a mouth. Then he drew sticks for legs and arms. 

"I'm done Ms. Stacey."

"Hmmm, R.H. can you show me in the mirror where you see your arms and legs?"

"I see it on my page."

"But, can you see them in the mirror?"

"No."

"What do you see in the mirror?"

"I think I want to erase this."

He then truly looked at himself in his mirror. He concentrated so hard and took his time. I feel like this picture speaks volumes!

E.R. was working on her portrait today. She was doing an amazing job. 

Here is her final portrait. It truly does look like her! Excellent job!

S.S. concentrated extremely hard on each aspect of his self-portrait. When describing it at share circle, he explained that he worked hard on the details around his eyes. 

S.S.: "I have these parts here in my eyes (pointing to his eyelids) and dark parts under my eyes. I don't know why I have them. And I noticed I have two different circles in my eyeballs. These ones then the black dots in the middle. I also worked really hard on my ears and drawing the holes on each side. This side is a lot better than the other side though."

There are more to come too! I cannot wait to see as the children develop more and more and add more details to their drawings!

Here are some more of the self-portraits that have been done this week. It amazes me how much they are concentrating, and how much they actually look like them when they hold them up!