Tag Archives: chickadee

Planning a Grocery Store

We have an active pretend area in our classroom and decided it was time to encourage children to think together about how themes might be expanded. Every day children choose between home and family themes like cooking dinner or caring for babies, setting up a restaurant to going out to eat, or opening a doctor’s office. What else would be fun to pretend about together?

After some false starts, we all agreed on shopping at a grocery store. So the next question was, “What do you need to shop in a grocery store?”

Children quickly agreed that we’d need a cash register and money. But one child added a new element. She said that “the register has to be near the thing that moves”. When we asked “what thing that moves?” ideas like these developed:

• The register is on one end and the food moves to the register
• You have to turn it on – we need a switch
• The part that moves is black
• There’s a stick you have to use to keep the food apart
• We’d need many many bags
• The bags are on a hook that can hold lots of bags
• We need that machine with knobs and buttons for money – the bank so we can get money (atm machine)

Rather than rush the process, we returned to the conversation on multiple days so that we could judge what was still important to the children. It became clear we needed to build a conveyor belt. But how could we do it and what would we need?

• I have tools at home that I can bring in so we can build it
• We need a piece that’s black about this big (children showed the necessary size with their arms)
• It should be this high (showing height)
• To make it move it has to go around like this (showing the movement of a handle) – yes we need a handle!
• We need the switch to turn on and off to make it go
• The atm machine needs 5 knobs – blue, green, black, red, and purple
• The money can go through the slot

After looking at the children’s list of ideas, a parent who is a carpenter built us the conveyor belt you see in the photos below. When children first saw it, they recognized many of the features they described realized. Every day we’ve had many shoppers arranging their produce on the belt, and thinking together about how conveyor belts work! It has been exciting for teachers to see such young children come together to share their common experiences in the grocery, and then plan, problem solve, and design their own tools and space so successfully.

Use this Grocery Store to see some videos of the conveyor belt in action:

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Map Project

This year many of our youngest children have been traveling and there has been lots of conversation about vacations and trips to visit family. We often talk about how children traveled: Was it so far away that you took an airplane? Could you drive? Did you need to sleep away from home? Where did you sleep? Did you go over the ocean or over land? As we talk together, our classroom globe is featured and we help children find where we are now as well as where they traveled, so that we can show how far the trip was on the map. This informal and often spontaneous conversation also leads to questions about the globe itself, and we often talk about the symbols children notice, whether they show land forms, water, continents, animals that live nearby, etc.

Teachers decided to see if a more formal project might develop from this interest. We decided to start by asking families to help by sharing places around the world that are important to each child’s family identities. We posted this information in each location on 2 huge hallway maps – one of the United States and one of the world. And as information came in, we began our project by taking children out into the hallway to find their names and notice all the places associated with their families.

What a powerful beginning this turned out to be! For some children, finding their names and the names of countries important to family members has been the primary focus. For others, the interest has been in the maps themselves: Why is a globe round and this world map flat? Why does the United States look so big on this map and so small on this one? We live in Massachusetts – where is it on this map? Why can’t I find my house on the map? Why are there dots or lines or bumps? Blue is the water – there is land and water. What makes this place an island?

Our next step was to invite children to work together on a map of our classroom. Because so few children are representational in their drawings now, we used shapes as symbols for our table surfaces, hoping that would help children visualize our classroom activity centers and other features. Children looked around the room as we decided the best shape for each area and how to place it. We noticed the shape of our whole room – where the shorter and longer walls are. We found doorways together and noticed that only one wall has windows. When children weren’t sure, we walked over to the room area in question with our map, comparing what we placed with what we saw in our classroom space.

Many children chose to continue this process by making their own maps and with a focus on both family identities and our immediate shared environment (the classroom) we found the maps that children made also held personal meaning. Many maps of children’s houses were made, along with maps of the route children take to school. Details included our neighboring mountain, the Great Blue Hill, and children have added the road that passes Houghton’s Pond, another neighborhood landmark. Other children drew themselves in the car on family errands to the store, or on the way to a favorite gymnastics class. Some drew maps they could use, like a map of the zoo that shows the way to see monkeys, elephants and giraffes.
When families supported this project by allowing children to bring in family photos or artifacts that represent important places and people, our conversations were deeply enriched and children made new connections to each other. Some families have brought in books featuring places important to their cultural identities too, and we hope that this will continue.

Right now children are finding maps around the classroom, asking for details, and finding places relevant to their family experiences and identities. The book “Me On the Map” by Joan Sweeny has stimulated many conversations as children clarify the scales of different kinds of maps, and we’ve found children drawing themselves on classroom maps as well. Books featuring global families or houses often have maps in the back, and now children find them on their own and ask for more details about where the stories or people they’ve read about come from.

And we’ve seen children begin to represent land areas in their art. One child, when she mixed a beautiful shade of brown new to her, decided to surround it with blues so she could make “an island” We find children using lines to connect shapes, and are hearing more and more children label their work as a representation of a “house” or “mountain” as they develop their capacity for symbolic thinking.

We are taking the time to observe and collect information on what’s most important to the children so that we can offer meaningful extensions to this project. We know we want to find ways to think more deeply about land forms. We know we want to extend our classroom mapping experience to other parts of our school environment. As the weather gets warmer, we may be moving outdoors for more experiences relating to our mapping experiences – thinking about the outside of our building and our playground, and thinking more about the landmarks and features of our neighborhood.

And we’ll continue to look for ways to include families in this shared experience. Our annual multicultural family lunch is coming up, and we are hopeful that at least a few of the foods we share will represent some of the rich diversity of family experiences and identities that are present in our community.

 

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Night Forest Project

A good classroom project has a beginning, middle, and end, and as we finish the ninth week of our woodland and night forest project we are beginning to look for a way to share our work and find closure.

Back in October, we saw a strong interest in forest animals and the changing season. We stimulated the children’s thinking with a side table featuring seasonal leaves, pine cones, bark and twigs, and forest animals that children used to create pretend games. It seemed that even with many other activities and classroom investigations present, strong interest in this side table continued to grow.

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As we listened in on the pretend themes in the forest, we heard a variety of stories about animal families, animals looking for food, and animals looking for warm spaces. It became clear that we could connect the children’s interest in forest animals with storytelling experiences, and with our own relationship to the changing season, with its shorter days and cooler temperatures.

There were many informal opportunities to make connections, and we were conscious to use many. When children brought in a warm coat to play outside, we thought together about how animals might stay warm. We watched leaves change color and then fall from our playground trees. When we raked leaves outdoors, we thought about who might live under a pile of leaves and what that might feel like. We watched Canada geese flying overhead when we were on the playground, and thought together about where they might go. And we encouraged children to think about whether it was starting to be darker when they woke up in the morning or when they went to bed as we head towards the shortest days.

As children thought more about Halloween, walks in the dark, and worries in the night, conversations shifted a bit towards night time animals. What happens outside when we go to sleep? Which animals come out and which ones sleep when we do? Where do they sleep?

Flannel board and felt stories offer children a wonderful, and physical, way to focus their stories, so we used felt day and night time forest scenes at science to encourage storytelling. It became clear that the interest in night was strong. One child, who is a wonderful storyteller, created story after story about animals outside in a night time forest, and we began to see owls featured in many of the children’s stories.

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A visit from a local naturalist, who brought a great horned owl in for us to observe closely, stimulated an even stronger interest in owls and other nocturnal animals. We decided it was time to offer children an opportunity to create their own representation of a forest.

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We brought in a large box (thanks to the parent who donated it!) and asked the children what we might do with it. Children were fairly quick to agree they wanted to make a forest. Our storyteller stated that it should be a night time forest and our collaborative plan began.

Our first step was to ask children what they would need to do to change a box into a forest at night. We collected ideas over a few days:

  • We could paint the box black
  • We could use cardboard and sticks to make trees
  • We need leaves, feathers, grass and ground
  • We need stars and the moon – very bright white stars
  • We’ll add animals to the forest. Some will be in their homes. Some will be out in the forest. Some will be sleeping. Some will be out at night.
  • When the animals go home some will be in the ground, some in the trees, some in bunny holes, and some in a cave
  • Birds, squirrels, bumble bees, ladybugs, spiders and other insects will be sleeping
  • Owls, fox, skunks, raccoons, snails, and opossums will be out in the night
  • The animals should be with their families

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We’ve been working on our box – painting the inside and outside, adding stars and the moon, deciding how to build trees, over many days. Lately we’ve used the box with the same forest animals we used in October, and will be making some of our own animals soon. We may not realize all the ideas shared through our planning process, but when we all feel finished, we’ll invite our friends and family to celebrate our forest and our growing collaborative skills!

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Connections and Curriculum

As we start our school year together in a classroom of very young children that we don’t know well yet, we are looking for interests everyone shares that can give shape to our developing curriculum and can help children make connections across many experiences. We want to encourage children to engage with materials and learn more about how to use classroom tools and media and we hope that children will begin to connect socially at the same time – talking together, helping each other find what’s needed, sharing ideas and experiences, and beginning to notice the things children have in common as well as the differences in approach or experience that we can all learn from and appreciate.

Teachers often think about very open-ended themes or projects to get his process started – looking at the environment, thinking about color, making a mark, telling stories all offer beginnings that can unfold in multiple ways over time.

An example this year has been color as an organizing idea around the classroom. We began by encouraging children to use primary colors at the easel and at collage as we introduced these classroom spaces to the children. When we used glue at collage with a variety of colorful circles, would children notice colors? Sort colors? When children created their first paintings, would they keep primary colors “clean” or would they begin mixing experiments right away? Would line or filling a whole page be the primary interest or would color be an organizer? When we introduced children to classroom puzzles or color cubes what could we observe about the children’s understanding of and thinking about color as they constructed? Our observations inform decisions about experiences to offer next, and help us understand how children are thinking about the experiences we share, even when they might not be ready to tell us much about their ideas yet.

Right from the beginning of our year, we’ve had children very interested in using color as an organizer as they sort, create patterns and construct. We’ve had children interested in naming (labeling) colors And we’ve had many children mixing, experimenting, and investigating the multiple shades that can be created when colors are combined. With these approaches and interests in mind, we could offer a wider variety of classroom experiences that we knew would be engaging and offer rich opportunities for the children to connect.

At the easels, we’ve encouraged children to focus their interest in shades of color by changing the color combinations offered. One week might focus on yellows and blues so that a variety of greens could be easily created. Another week might focus on yellows and reds, or reds and blues. When the primary colors returned, we observed a more purposeful investigation of color mixing, and the conversations about shades of color have engaged more and more children. At our weekly paper day, when children share work with classmates before it travels home, many children describe the ways they thought about color to create as they painted.

We offered a variety of books that feature color, so that conversations could continue in a new way. Books featuring fall leaves, and books like Mouse Paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh or Mix It Up by Herve Tullet have been read and re-read often. Mouse Paint became so important to the children that we decided to extend its themes into our first fingertip and hand painting experiences and for collaborative retelling and drama experiences.

When we were ready to cook our first recipe using tomatoes, we made sure that we investigated many kinds of tomatoes – with different colors as well as sizes. We used these investigations to introduce documentation to the children, encouraging them to talk about, observe carefully, and then draw the varieties they were interested in.

At the science table, we’ve been mixing colors in muffin tins filled with water. Primary watercolors are in 3 of the tins, and children used a pipette to move colors in and out of the water, so that they can create a variety of shades and colors. Including transparent color viewers, mixing tools, and seasonal vegetables at the table enriches the conversation about shades of color, mixing color, and seasonal changes. A favorite activity is to take a viewer and look at the classroom and classmates through yellow, or blue, or red.

And now that the leaves are changing, we are well prepared to look for color in nature. We’ve offered a bed of leaves for pretend woodland animals to shelter in on one of our side tables, encourage children to look up and out of our classroom window often to notice the changes outdoors, and are beginning to investigate changes outdoors as well.

This is one example of how in a busy classroom informed by child interest one thing leads naturally to another. The same process is unfolding in storytelling, making a mark, looking at the environment, thinking about letters and words, and in many other rich investigations that are on-going every day.

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Seasonal Celebrations

As we move towards the holiday season, and as our days continue to grow shorter and darker, festivals that feature light are a natural way to begin to talk about diverse celebrations with the children. Whether it’s Diwali, the mid-autumn moon festivals, Halloween with its lit jack-o lanterns, Hanukkah, birthdays, or Christmas, light plays an important part in many family traditions, stories, and celebrations.

This year we began the discussion by making floating lanterns with the children, informed by Diwali celebrations. We found India on the globe, and looked at a variety of tools, fabrics, and artifacts from India. Children discovered that games we know, like chutes and ladders, come from India, and noticed that the wooden printing tools we looked at are very much like the tools we use for up and down printing here at school. We talked together about how family traditions often include family stories and that stories can be read in books, told and simply listened to, painted onto fabric or other media, or even danced.

After children decorated their lanterns and added “pretend light” to represent a candle, we filled our metal tray with water so that we could float our lanterns all together. We used tea lights in each lantern for a beautiful effect!

Children noticed that some of the lanterns floated but others sank (too little water? too heavy?) We added some water, and made some currents with our breath as wind to move as many lanterns as we could down the “river”.

A lovely shared experience!

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