Thursday, January 30, 2014

We are having quite the winter here! We've had no students for the past two days due to snow days for extremely cold temperatures. The teachers have used the time to organize their rooms, document, plan and display, which was really a great opportunity for all of us.

120 exploration of the block area.

Provocation is, "How can we get to the other side?"

We are going to move this exploration into "Can you build a bridge?" With Popsicle sticks and play dough or plasticine if we can get it.

For today, though, I'm watching E, K and W work with the blocks to build a bridge.

E has found little boats, the size of Hot Wheels cars, and he's placed them on the blue paper which serves as water. K is attempting to build a huge, tall bridge.

Teacher- How do the cars get up there?

E- this is for the helicopter.

Teacher- how do the cars cross the water?

E- They can jump.

Teacher- Not every person driving a car is going to want to jump across the water because they won't feel that it's safe.

E notices a bridge on one of the books in the provocation area.

E- We can build something like this?

Teacher- Why do you want the bridge to be so tall?

They can't answer this.

Teacher- It's not "wrong." There are tall bridges. I just want to know why they are tall. What do you think?

They still can't answer, but decide that such a tall bridge is a hazard to their health, as it keeps falling down and threatening to hit them in the heads.

E is convinced cars can jump rivers, so I find a video online of what happens if a person drives off a ramp into the water.

He then seems to understand that jumping isn't an option.

E then suggests that helicopters can carry the cars across.

K decides to build a huge bridge in the corner.

W creates a bridge that works. She figures out that the blocks need to be the same heights or the cars can't continue on the bridge. She lays flat blocks across so to bypass the issue of requiring a ramp.

Teacher- Why is the bridge so high?

They still don't know.

Teacher- what is under the bridge.

K- Water, rocks.

Teacher- What kind of transportation do you go on in the water?

W- Cars! No, boats!

Teacher- Are boats always the same size?

W- Some are bigger.

Teacher- So why would the bridge need to be tall? What would happen if I take a big, big boat under the bridge?

W knocks the bridge down.

K- it would fall! It would hit the bridge!

Teacher- So tall bridges are okay, right? But what we need is to figure out how to get the cars up on the big bridge because we already learned today that cars can't jump, right?

They look around at the pieces.  I remind them that the blocks can be used on a diagonal, too. This is what they needed. Now they have the idea of ramps and quickly begin to build a bridge that will answer the provocation without requiring a stunt driver.

A successful bridge! 

A tall bridge

112- We used collage materials to create habitats for our clay ocean creatures. 

Using books and collage materials to create an underwater habitat

Lots of fun materials!

108- I pushed in to observe the habitat provocation for the block area. 

Teacher- Tell me about your habitat.

A- This is the sand, this is a bush and this is the fence, so he can't get out.

Teacher- This is a pet camel?

A- He is a zoo camel.

M- I don't know what this is called?

A- You don't know?

M- No. What is it called?

A- Where an animal lives.

I guide them to the word, "habitat."

M- I need to make grass. How would I do that?

Teacher- You can use anything in the block area to make it look like where the elephants live.

Only one student is making their habitat in the wild. The other three seem to be making zoo habitats. I realize that this is because they are usually only exposed to wild animals at the zoo, being that we live in a large, urban area.  I wonder if we could promote wild habitats if we used local animals that they might have seen in the country, a bit more wild than in the city. A trip to Hidden Valley Animal Ranch would be eye-opening, as that place allows their animals to roam fairly free in an open space. For now, though, we have an iPad and google.

Teacher- Do you think lions live in the wild, or are they always in zoos? I wonder about that.

K- I think they only live in zoos.

Teacher- I keep thinking about the Lion King movie. Did you ever see that?

K- yes.

Teacher- Where they in a zoo?

K- No! Can I see pictures on your iPad?

Teacher- Of course.

We look up pictures of lion habitats and he becomes engrossed in looking at many, many photos.

K- I don't have real grass to do this, though.

Teacher- But sometimes it's fun to see if we can make it look like that with the things we have!

K goes to work.

K- here's the lion, the grass and the sidewalks.

He's used fabric for grass and blocks for sidewalk.

Teacher- Sidewalks?

K- Oh! There aren't sidewalks!

He laughs and puts the sidewalk blocks away.

M- The blocks are the road and the white part is the rocks under the road. This is the elephant's house.

Teacher- Is this in a zoo? What else do you have in there?

M- A tree. And rocks.

Teacher- What are the white rocks?

M- The food. 

Below are photos of the giraffe habitat that another student was creating. Ms. Boyd documented a great conversation with her about the giraffes requiring trees.  The student needed more trees, so she created them out of the floral foam and pine cones.  Small giraffes ate off of the small trees, taller giraffes were placed near the taller trees.  I've included these pictures because I thought it was pretty neat. 

Giraffe Habitat

Giraffe Habitat

101 and 103- Preschool classes critiqued the Spring mural again.  We chanted the colors of the rainbow in a fun way that will help them memorize the colors for the color wheel in their regular visual arts classes and, as a result, I noticed more beautiful rainbows appearing on the mural.