Volcano

During our Dinosaur inquiry the children demonstrated an interest in learning how to make a volcano. We asked the children if anyone wanted to share with their friends how to make a volcano.  Clara and Roberto demonstrated with their body how a volcano erupts. After more discussion, the children mentioned that a volcano is a mountain of rocks with a hole from which lava comes out during an eruption. We explained that we would create an eruption by mixing baking soda, dish soap, food coloring and adding vinegar to the mixture.  We went outside to the sand box, the children built volcanoes using sand. They created an eruption by putting a container containing the mixture of baking soda in the hole of their volcano and by pouring vinegar in the mixture. We brought out dinosaur figurines so the children could develop their pretend play.

To learn more about our Dinosaur inquiry go under the tab Our Inquiries.

Here is a video of a dinosaur dance that the children have been enjoying.  Ask your child to dance for you! 

The children also created their own dinosaur dance. We asked the children if they had any suggestion for a song and Colin suggested they dance to "I Like To Move It" from the movie Madagascar. Not every children wanted to dance so we gave them the choice of playing the drums or singing the song. Some wanted to do it all!! The videos for those who decided to perform are in their ePortfolios,

Construction Vehicles

To learn more about construction, we had the children look at pictures and watch videos of vehicles and other equipment used on construction sites in the school neighborhood.  We talked about the function of those construction vehicles and equipment.  I know that Kaitlyn`s home is under renovation so I asked her parents if they had pictures to share with the class.  Here are the pictures and a video.

Dumpster

Cement Truck

Go Hut

 Construction has also been going on around the school. Here are pictures and a video of two construction sites.

Here is a video of a construction vehicle working in front of the school.  

Construction vehicule in action

Construction

Last week, we had taken a construction table out to see if the children would be interested in playing with the tools. The children seemed to enjoy the table so we decided to extend the activity by turning the house into a construction site. We added an activity of Screws and Bolts, some wood, poly-b piping and cones. The children said that they needed hard hats, vests and tool belts to wear. We talked about safety signs that can be found on a construction site. Roberto, Preston and Colin wanted to make stop signs, and Noah made a No Children Allowed sign. We decided to have a site manager. His or her job consisted of making sure that workers signed in for work and that the safety rules, that we wrote together, were respected. We also had the children write popcorn words to put on the wood blocks that we added to our construction site.

Our construction site.

Joanna-Lee, Giuliana and Ava are writing popcorn words for our wood blocks.

Krishna is making a tool sign to identify where to put tools during tidy-up time.

Noah`s No Children Allowed sign

Making patterns with screws and bolts.

Savera is making a tool belt.

Taylen is our site manager. He is making sure workers are signing up for work.

 

Terry Fox Walk

On Friday, the children participated in the walk for Terry Fox. The children had previously viewed a documentary on Terry Fox and his goal to run across Canada to raise money for cancer research. The children were invited to make posters to display during their walk. Here are pictures of the kindergarten children "Walking for Terry Fox".

Here we are, on our walk for Terry Fox.

 

 

Dinosaurs

For the past weeks, we have tried to stimulate the interest of the children into a topic by talking to them and by displaying toys and objects. One day, we put a big egg in diplay and asked the children to guess what it was. Most of the children knew it was an egg but we got different suggestions on which animal it belongs to.

Here are some guesses:

We then put the egg in water and observed the egg cracked and a dinosaur emerged from it.

Here are observations made by the children:

We put some dinosaurs in our Active World display and invited the children to play with the toys.  We asked the children what they knew about dinosaurs and what they wanted to know. To read about our Dinosaur Inquiry go under the tab Our Inquiries.  For the next few days, we will be helping the children answer the questions that came out during our inquiry.

Clouds

This year, Mrs. Cole and I wanted the children to help us create a sky with clouds as a background for one of our bulletin boards. First, we had the children observe clouds in the sky. On a beautiful day, we put on our sunglasses, layed down on blankets and looked at clouds in the sky. After returning to class, the children had the opportunity to recreate clouds using a mixture of white glue and shaving cream. We also talked about what clouds are made off (water) and water falls in rain drops to earth when clouds get too heavy.  We demonstrated the rain falling down by making a cloud using shaving cream and by having the children pour blue colored water on the cloud using "pipettes". When the colored water when through the cloud, it gave the effect of rain falling. Finally, some of our students helped decorating our blue cloth by making clouds. Our new bulletin board looks beautiful and is the perfect background for our popcorn words.

We are looking at clouds in the sky.

Andrea is creating a cloud.

Colin made an airplane and is adding clouds to his picture.

Evallie is making a cloud.

Rachel's cloud.

Folu is making a cloud using a sponge.

Nahisha is having fun making a cloud. 

It is raining in our jar!

Our bulletin board.  

With the help of our friends who like to get their hands gooey, we also made "Cloud Dough".  We read the recipe and added the ingredients together.  The children had fun mixing and playing with the dough.

Cloud Dough recipe

Having fun playing with the dough.

Slugs

At the end of the summer, I started to see little creatures called slugs in my grass. I decided to bring a few to school and see if we could have fun with slugs. 

 

One of our friends.

First, we had the children guessing what our new visitors were called. 

Our guesses:
-A worm (Rachel, Evallie, Colin, and Antonio)
- A snail (Folu, Joanna-Lee, Nahisha and Anthony)
-A slug (Kaitlyn, Ava, and Giuliana)



Then, the children helped us to create an habitat for our slugs. 

Material needed to make an habitat for slugs:

- soil,

- flowers, plants and grass for food.

- water,

- air.

We made holes in the lid of the container to provide enough air for the slugs and we sprayed the slugs once a day to keep their habitat moist.

 

Looking at slugs.

Some children explored the slugs with their senses and we shared their discoveries with the class.



With the help of prompting questions, here are their discoveries:

la vue (sight):

- Slugs are pink (Giuliana), they look like wood (Colin), gray (Evallie)
- Slugs slide their body (Rachel)

le toucher (touch):

- Slugs are slimy (Mahmoud), sticky (Kaitlyn), cold (Mahmoud), small (Evallie), they are bigger than ants (Kaitlyn)

l'odorat (smell):

- Slugs smell nothing (Rachel, evallie, Mahmoud, Kaitlyn)

l'ouïe (hearing):

- Slugs do not make any noise when they move (Rachel, evallie, Mahmoud, Kaitlyn).


To experience more with our senses, we made "slime" with the children so they could experience their sense of "touch" what "slimy" feels like.

 

We learned that slugs can live in water. They are called sea slugs. Slugs can be very colorful.

Click on the link to view some sea slugs: Sea Slugs

Moreover, we learned that slugs can be as big as bananas. Here is a video on Banana Slugs

We read books about slugs and learned that slugs have one head, 2 eyes on their tentacles, one mouth, one foot and a skirt.  Here is a picture drew by Giuliana. She identified the body part of the slug in English and Kaitlyn identified its body part in French.

The senior students made rhymes with slugs and read a book from the "UG" family.