Thursday, 21 July 2011

Honey...Honey...Lion by Jan Brett

 



This week our study book was Honey...Honey...Lion! written by Jan Brett. The children enjoyed cooperating just like the real bees. We talked about the body parts of a bee and we dramatized their work. We had antennas that helped us smell and feel, their tubelike tongues and wings. Flying through the garden like busy bumblebees, the children went on a nectar hunt. They all did a waggle dance when they found the nectar and all the other bees came to help. 
Cooperation is very important for the bees and the children saw how important it is to work as a group. 

Thursday, 14 July 2011

Cloudy with a chance of meatballs by Judi Barrett

Cloudy with a chance of meatballs written by Judi Barrett was our book study for this week. Involving math in our activities, we created our own town. Using colourful sticky dots to pretend that they are meatballs we wrote down what we wish would fall down from the sky. We organized the food that the children came up with and the food that falls down from the sky in our story into different groups. At the end, we made a chart and we analyzed and discussed if our meal would have been balanced.  We created the town by using different kind of shapes and every group came up with a name for their town. 
The question that the children asked: How would it be if you would have ordered food and it would have fallen down from the sky?

Sunday, 10 July 2011

The Enormous Carrot by Vladimir Vagin



Last week we studied through art, music and movement the story of the Enormous Carrot. We made an enormous carrot out of cardboard and construction paper. For music and movement, we made a chart and we wrote down the characters that appear in the story. Using musical instruments, we dramatized the story and at the end we ate carrots, made a salad and juice out of root and other vegetables.
Did the children talk about being open-minded and trying different kind of juices?

Wednesday, 22 June 2011

Express yourself – summative week


Last week we explored Becky’s idea about Fish. We gathered the information that Becky and the other ones knew about fish and what they would like to explore more. We all made a connection to the Friendship unit – The Rainbow Fish story by Marcus Pfister, but this time we were looking to see how the rainbow fish expresses himself. The children identified two different forms of expression: body movement; when the rainbow fish swam by, he was expressing his pride; and by using words. We also talked about different opinions and different perspectives, so the children identified that in the story, the octopus is a character that sees things from a different perspective and helps the rainbow fish out.
At the end, we all modeled a fish from our own perspective of what a fish looks like and Nicolas said that from his perspective he will make the fish with all the scales shiny.
For the summative week, we will try to demonstrate our understanding of the central idea, We express ourselves in many ways and this helps us connect with one another, in different ways.