Learning About Mammals

Our ECE gets some Goat Love.

Action shot...I get nibbled on the chin by a loveable goat baby!

Each child got a goat high-five when it was time to say goodbye.

One of the benefits of teaching at a rural school (and of living on a hobby farm) is that there are always so many creatures at hand to be brought in to the classroom. My principal once joked that she was going to have to start patting me down at the door because of my habit of bringing animals into the classroom. Chicks, ducklings, and baby bunnies are just the start of the list.

Children are naturally curious about living things, and I have always felt that modelling the gentle and compassionate treatment of animals while sparking the children's sense of connection with other living things is an essential component of what we teach in Kindergarten.

This morning a goat-farming, soap-making friend was gracious enough to bring her baby goats in for a visit! Before they arrived, we had a discussion about goats as mammals, in comparison with humans. With a few "leading" questions, the children were able to deduce from their previous knowledge that mammals:

• have fur or hair
• give birth to live babies
• are warm-blooded
• make milk to feed their babies

Many of the children have baby siblings and were able to relate to the notion that baby mammals nurse from their mothers. One of the children said, "Even YOU, Mrs. Pinkerton?" (they know I have a toddler) and they took it in stride that I also make milk to feed my baby! I also mentioned that many farm babies as well as human babies are bottle-fed. 

We discussed the uses of goats: for meat, for milk, and as pets. We talked about what can be made from goat milk. One of the children brought up the fact that there are also wild goats who can climb mountains. 

We were asked to create a "play structure" for the goats as it would encourage them to stay in one place. We had generated a list of ideas last week (one of which was that we should put the goats in buckets and pull them up into the loft using rope). We settled for some large cardboard pallets leaned on our upturned recycling box. 

The children did so well containing their excitement in order to be calm and quiet when the goats were with us! The little fur babies pranced from child to child, wagging their little tails, nibbling on ears and fingers, and trying to climb on everything and everyone. They were certainly adorable! 

When it came time to write in our journals, every child wrote about our visit from the baby goats. 

Tonight we'll be getting our piglets to be raised as meat. I suspect I may be bringing one (or two) of them in for a visit soon! I also have a tame chicken but my principal has asked me to draw the line at bringing our ponies to school. Too bad, isn't it? :)

Have You Seen Birds?

Inquiry can be a funny thing. Like a flock of birds, it can start off in one direction but before you know where it might be going, it changes direction. Some of the birds go one way, while others go another way. It can be challenging to keep track of them all, but exciting to witness!

Our students had so many questions and conversations about birds. We always start our inquiries with some little activity or book to spark the children's interest, followed by co-creating an "I think I know" chart. We call it this because it allows the children to "change their thinking" if the knowledge they gather through the inquiry contradicts a preconception they may have had. It also allows us to get an idea of the children's background knowledge and previous experience with the topic we are exploring. 

Once we have an idea of the kinds of questions the children have (by creating an "I wonder" chart), we create a "map" for ourselves of ideas for discussions we might have, resources we can gather, and ways to link their explorations to the Kindergarten Document. This is an exciting task, revealing the vast possibilities presented by following the children's interests. We don't write anything in stone, because as I mentioned, the direction can change quickly (and often in ways that we can't anticipate!). 

A combination of books from our classroom, school, and community libraries ensures that the children have many resources to explore!

The books we gather inform much of our inquiry, and inspire the children to ask deeper questions. Themes of diversity, compassion, healing after loss, caring for the environment, and the connection between humans and animals flow through the rich literature we read aloud to our students, and we're continually amazed at the children's ability to grasp of deep topics.

Activating prior knowledge is a powerful tool before we read a rich text.

Soon, the exploration spills into other centres around the room, particularly the creative centres. Without prompting, the children create play dough birds complete with feathers, eggs in nests, and mama birds to sit on them. As they create, we circulate and discuss their work with them to learn more about their understanding of the topic of inquiry.

"Why do you think the mother sit on the eggs? How long do you think it takes for the eggs to hatch? Do you think the father bird help? Is the baby bird in the egg when the mother bird lays it, or does it grow?"

A key component of inquiry is that we do not GIVE answers to the children, but discuss questions with them and help them find information they need. The end result is not necessarily the RIGHT answer, but a deepening of their ability to ask questions about the world around them.

As the days and weeks pass, the children widen their exploration into dramatic play (by building nests with blocks and flying in search of food), science (by observing the birds that visit our feeders, studying our field guide, and enjoying non-fiction texts and videos), language arts (through read-alouds, poems, and fingerplays), and mathematics (keeping track of bird visitors on a tally chart, graphing types of birds we've seen, and learning about egg sizes). 

The word family list on the right arose spontaneously as the children noticed the rhyming words in this poem. They were very excited to think of lots of "est" words!

We investigated bird behaviour through the seasons when we read this beautifully illustrated fiction text while learning about how a bird-loving boy takes care of the wildlife in his backyard. We also enjoyed reading Riki's Science Journal as we read the story.

With the warm weather, we've observed the return of the Canada Geese, and are starting to hear a greater variety of birdsong! This is an exciting time of year to delve into the feathery world of birds!

Helping Out Our Feathered Friends

In the early winter we talked a lot with our students about how animals survive the Canadian winter. We read many fiction and non-fiction texts on the topics of migration and hibernation, created charts of who does what, had a classroom visitor from the Ministry of Natural Resources who shared migration route maps with us (and even had a taxidermied Gray Owl to show us!), and explored hibernation through writing and art.

At this late moment of winter, however, it is time to consider the scarcity of food many animals face as the season continues.

Today we created birdseed ornaments to support our feathered friends through the remainder of the winter! I started with a modelled writing session, showing the children how to write, read, and follow a procedure. 

Then we broke up into smaller groups and got to work (or play, depending on how you see it) to create our ornaments.

Birdseed Ornaments

You will need:
3/4 cup flour
1/2 cup water
3 Tbsp. corn syrup
1 envelope gelatin
4 cups birdseed

To create the ornaments:

1. Mix the flour, water, corn syrup, and gelatin in a medium bowl. 

2. Add the birdseed and mix well till all the seed is coated in the mixture.

3. Firmly press the mixture either into an oiled muffin tin, or into cookie cutter shapes set on an oiled pan.

4. Insert a piece of straw into the ornament to create a hole (for inserting a string for hanging).

5.Allow to dry for 2-3 hours, then carefully remove from tins or cutters and turn over. Allow the other side to dry for 2-3 hours.

6. Insert a string, and hang for the birds to enjoy!

We will hang our ornaments on the big pine tree outside our classroom window. We will leave a clipboard by the window with some binoculars and a bird identification guide so we can keep track of the kinds of birds that visit.

January Ramblings

A bear den...lift the lid to see the bear sleeping inside!

Labelling an illustration of an animal that survives the winter outside.

Winter animals celebrate Christmas in the sensory bin filled with Epsom salts.

A beaver!

Tracing, painting, and cutting out numbers.

Creating art based on Ezra Jack Keats' "The Snowy Day".

Co-created number anchor charts in the works.

Sometimes it feels like we're doing everything but just being in the now of teaching Kindergarten. From November's progress reports to Decembers concerts and open-houses, into January's cold-weather warnings and February's report cards, there are so many places for our attention to be. 

This has been a busy year so far! Extreme cold weather has forces many indoor recesses on us which do take their toll after several days in a row. My teaching partner and I were busy preparing a presentation to other Kindergarten educators in our board when I came down with the flu. Close on its heels was bronchitis, which flattened me and kept me from work for a week. Add to that the inevitable illnesses of my toddler, husband, and older children, and you can understand how grateful I am to just BE here today, focused on the children in our class.

Since our return after Christmas holidays, we've been exploring ideas around how animals survive the harsh winter. As a rural school, many of the children have experiences of seeing animals like wild turkeys, deer, porcupines, and birds outside in the snow. Through rich read alouds, we have come up with many questions and answered most of them! The children loved creating charts of animal behaviours in winter (hibernate? migrate? stay here?), and were very diligent about recording all the animals they could think of. Their interest in animals spilled over into the sensory bin, art centre, and creative centre where one little girl in particular loved sculpting Canadian animals that we had discussed during our circle times.

I've been wanting to get the children working on a number wall since early fall, but the interest didn't seem to be there. Today the conditions were perfect somehow, and some of the Year 2s got busy tracing our number lacing shapes. I asked them to paint them then wondered aloud how else we could show the numbers we'd created. Different students contributed their fingers for photographing, or glued pompoms on ten frames.

I'm enjoying just being here in each moment of the day, observing the children, and making plans to extend their learning and understanding. We've had some great discussions about maps and globes and I sense a new inquiry blossoming. 

Stay tuned for a "teacher tutorial" for a beautiful art project we created last week!

A Little Bit of Christmas

In FDK we are encouraged to steer away from teacher-selected "themes", and to favour the inquiries and interests of the children. But when December arrives, it is hard to resist the attraction of Christmas! We are busily preparing for our Christmas Open House, and while all centres are open, we have added a bit of sparkle here and some glitter there.

We plan our week(s) using a template that includes all the various centres in the classroom, and link our ideas back to the children's interests and questions, any inquiry that has arisen through play, and the many expectations laid out in the Ontario FDK Document. As with so much of what we do, there are many layers of learning happening while the children explore and play with new materials. 

Some of the week's Christmas centres include:

MATH EXPLORATION: rolling a number cube and placing the corresponding number of sparkly pompoms on a five- or ten-frame. We sit nearby and ask questions such as, how many more do you need to fill your ten-frame? Who has more? Can you fit six more on there? We make observations about the child's ability to recognize dot patterns on a number cube, count with one-to-one correspondence, represent numbers in various ways, compare quantities, and explore simple addition. If the children choose to play in pairs, we also observe their play and social skills. Can the child take turns? Do they use questions and statements effectively? How do they solve problems that arise?

SENSORY EXPLORATION: I brought in some whole spices, as well as some ground spices. The children have been invited to "sniff-and-match" the whole spice with its ground counterpart. The children come to me full of excitement..."I matched these ones!"

WRITING: We co-created a cloze-passage letter to Santa, focusing on sight words we've touched on this year. The Year Two group was then invited to write their own letter to Santa. I always photo-copy these to send home to parents, as some children can be hush-hush about their Christmas wishes! I have a modified version ready to write with the Year One students, and next week we'll walk to the post office to send them all to the North Pole!

SENSORY TABLE: I created a Golden Cinnamon Sensory experience for the children. A big bag of rice, cinnamon, glitter, and lots of golden trinkets from Dollarama were the raw materials. The children have loved exploring these items, using them to make "cakes", picking through to find the treasures, sorting them, and so on. It is very calming to let rice trickle down between your fingers! 

SAND TABLE: As we move through Advent with a focus on the Nativity Story, we are adding items to the room to encourage the children to draw on their previous knowledge and to retell the Christmas story. We have durable Nativity figures in our sand table and it's been wonderful to see the children sharing this timeless story with one another time after time.

Please check in next week for some Nativity Art!

Gingerbread Time!

The play dough centre is a hot spot in our classroom all year round. We make a new batch every Monday, incorporating reading, measuring, and forms of writing (procedure) into the process. The children roll balls, flatten it with a rolling pin, create snakes, pat it, squish it, cut shapes out of it, decorate their creations with sequins, toothpicks, glitter, and googly eyes. One of us usually sits at the table to demonstrate new techniques for manipulating play dough, while listening in on the spontaneous conversations that arise. These conversations between the children offer so many insights into their understanding of the world around them. We take photos of the children and make notes that will help us in future planning.

Today at our Welcome Circle (first thing in the morning) we passed around a small cup containing a mixture of cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and nutmeg. They each took a sniff and we marvelled at the range of their experiences of scent: "It smells like...hot jelly beans...cinnamon hearts...cookies...spicy stuff...GINGERBREAD!" We read "Maisy Makes Gingerbread" by Lucy Cousins and everyone seems keen to make REAL gingerbread cookies before Christmas.

We talked about where spices come from and they were astounded when I mentioned that cinnamon comes from the bark of a tree. I made a mental note to bring in the "raw materials" that are used to create dried spices: a ginger root, some whole cloves, a whole nutmeg, and some cinnamon sticks.

When we sent them out into the classroom to play, I gathered a small group in the play dough centre, and we went through the steps of creating play dough. This recipe was different as it required us to cook the dough, and the children were very interested in the way the mixture changed as it cooked.

In no time at all, we had a beautiful batch of Gingerbread Playdough, and we set the children loose with rolling pins, cutters, and lots of sparkly sequins with which to decorate their cookie creations! The dough turned out beautifully and as the site suggests, it would make wonderful homemade Christmas gifts. Enjoy!

Inquiry Never Ends

In a FDK classroom, interests may shift, questions may arise that have nothing to do with the current inquiry, or the children may suddenly stop playing at a centre that up until now has been the most popular hangout.

Sometimes it feels as if there's just no inquiry happening! This feeling usually arises when the teaching team feels that there is nothing "formal" going on (e.g., I haven't gone to find fifteen books about spiders/airplanes/castles in the library, and the children just aren't biting when I offer an enticing activity to extend their understanding of something they seemed interested in yesterday). 

We've learned to just ride this out. When our hunting inquiry drew to a natural close, we observed and listened carefully to see what other interests might arise. For a few days, a few of the children were interested in tying and taping string all over the classroom like webs. When this evolved into chasing and "webbing each other" like Spiderman, we tried to shift their focus towards learning more about spiders and how they spin webs. No bites. It felt like pulling teeth to generate an "I wonder" chart. The interest just wasn't there. 

We decided to change some of our centres up, leaving them open-ended enough so that the children had choice. We decided to focus on sorting, as many of the children were naturally doing this anyway during our tidy-up times. We created a planning template to see how many areas of the program document we could touch on with various centres. The children explored many new materials in new ways, and we were able to document all kinds of learning and discoveries as the children tried different ways of sorting various materials.

Kindergarten is like that. You might think the children are just playing (or in this case, just sorting), when in fact they are honing their fine motor skills by cutting with scissors, comparing and contrasting facial expressions, classifying living and non-living objects, and engaging in all sorts of complex conversations. The squirrel's tail and the piece of washed sheep's wool I added to our discovery centre sparked long discussions about where wool comes from, and why squirrels' fur is lots of colours. 

My enthusiasm for wool almost led me to believe that these questions meant that an inquiry into sheep and wool was in the works. I resisted that hope, because the questions ended with that one discussion. Perhaps this interest will arise again, but for now it is just that: an interest. In the Spring I'll bring in a raw fleece and we can work through the process together. Perhaps I'll have some spinning enthusiasts among my class. Time will tell.

The bottom line is, inquiry never stops. Sometimes inquiries last two minutes while we have a conversation, or just the length of time it takes to read a story. 

Yesterday we read a story about hibernation, not because I want to start a hibernation inquiry, but because someone picked it from the shelf and asked me to read it. The children's interest was piqued: they wanted to know how the animals know when it is time to come back to Canada, how the butterflies know the way to Mexico, and what a bear's snore sounds like. I wrote their questions down and will revisit them in the coming weeks and we'll see what happens.

I'll set that squirrel's tail and piece of wool aside in case a discussion about how animals stay warm in winter comes out of that read aloud!