Worm Day in May!

Finding Worms
After reading about earth worms, watching videos, having class discussions on how to care for earth worms, we went on a worm hunt outside after a very rainy couple of days in May.

Digging for Worms

We put our earth worms in a bin of soil from outside and then we each guessed how many worms we thought our class had collected.

Taking pictures of the worms with the class camera.

We had a variety of earth worm activities for our children to explore during our worm day. We made our own playdough in the class the day before so the children could mold their own worms from it.

Measuring worms at the math centre using seashells as a tool.

Observational Paintings.

Are earth worms attracted to water or dirt? At the Science & Discovery table.

Gummy worm science experiment. Each child made a prediction about what they thought would happen to the gummy worm after it sat in a cup of water over the weekend.

On Monday we took our cups down and observed and made conclusions about our gummy worm science experiment. They used their five senses to make their observations.
Overall, worm day was a success! 

Paintbrushes Not Permitted!

 

Art is an area that I absolutely love! There are no boundaries with what materials and tools you can use to create magnificent art pieces. Often in our classroom, I will set out different materials and tools that the children can paint with, other than paint brushes. I don't tell the children what they are to paint. It is up to them what they want to create. Recently, I set out some dandelions in a cup with brown, green, yellow, and white paint, paintbrushes, and some cut up pieces of cardboard as their canvas. I told the children they could paint the dandelions. Some children actually painted a still life picture of the dandelions (that is what I had intended for them to do) while some actually started to paint the dandelions (too funny!). Even a few painted the dandelions and then made impressions on the paper with them. When the children started to do this, I almost went to stop them because my intent was not to actually paint the flowers themselves but to paint a picture of them!!! But then I realized how creative they were being and the art pieces they produced were all so unique and different!

Abstract Art with Toothpicks
 

Potato Prints

Using cotton balls to decorate an Easter egg. It was fascinating to see how some children would dab with the cotton ball to make circle designs and others would slide the cotton ball across to make lines.

Bubble Wrap Art Prints

Potato Mashers.
The kids enjoyed mixing the colours together to see what different colours they could make.

Toothbrush Art
This picture is so beautiful! I love the way her lines streak across the page and her choice of colours.

Using forks to create art pieces. This student chose to create flowers.

Sponge Art.
After this student was done her art piece she labelled it with what tool she used and then the whole class gathered around her so she could show it off and explain how she created it.

Paper Towel Art.
It was interesting to see what technique they would choose to do with the rolls. Some would roll them along the paper while others would use the ends to do circle imprints.

Q-Tip Art

Pinecones and Scrap Wood Pieces.

Discovering Sea Shells

Seashell Invitation to Play

I was so lucky last week when I happened to spot a box of these seashells sitting in the office. I asked the secretary what they were for and she said someone had donated them to the school and she was just about to send an email out to any teacher that wanted them. I felt like I had just won the lottery! Of course I scooped them up right then and there! We had already done an inquiry earlier in the year on the ocean. Although this would have come in handy then, I knew the children would be so intrigued and fascinated by these items during any time of the year. So up they went on the table as soon as they were brought down to the room. Treasure like this cannot be hidden for even a second!

Using their senses to explore the sea shells

Admiring the starfish

When the children were touching and feeling the sea life they would often make comments and ask questions about the holes that many of them had. Why are there holes? What could they have been for? They were especially intrigued by the sound of the ocean they heard coming from the hole of the big conch shells.

Using the magnifying glasses to observe the details on the shells 

Recording in their science journals
 

Many of the students drew a picture of the sea shell they were most fascinated by in their science journals and recorded the shell as either being smooth or rough feeling.  

Drawing of a sea horse and describing it as rough

Starfish on a mirror. Seeing them from a different perspective.

Stacking starfish

Noticing the various sizes of the shells.

Learning to be careful with the fragile shells.

 

 

Making a circle formation with the different shells.



 

The children were so curious about the various sea life that were displayed on the table in the classroom. Each and everyone one of them were engaged when it was their turn to come and explore the sea shell table. They had so many questions and observations about many of the shells. They loved just picking them up and feeling them. They would notice the texture and the beautiful colours. They would put the various conch shells up to their ears to listen to the ocean or would cover their face with the ones that were as big as their heads. Some students would stack them, make a display on the mirrors, or would pick their favourite ones to form a circle. Others would comment on the weight of the shell or would compare the characteristics of one shell to another. A few students surprised me when they would know the name of one that I wasn't even sure about. This discovery of sea shells was one that each child was excited about and where they were wanting to learn more about this natural life from the sea.

Building Towers

Building Centre

 Often when the students are playing with the big blocks in our class we noticed they would build structures such as; towers, houses, and castles. So we decided to build on their interest and hopefully inspire the children to build a variety of towers in our classroom by setting up a whole new building centre at the dramatic play area. The building centre had displayed books about towers, framed photos of towers , different block sizes, paper towel tubes, cups, and 3D food containers.  

A replicated tower built by 3 students from a displayed tower book

Using small blocks to build her tower.

 In a basket we had clipboards with a paper titled "My Plan". The students would pick a tower book, look through the pictures and choose a tower they wanted to build. After they chose their tower they would draw it on their plan sheet and then try to build what they drew from the materials available at the building centre. The children really enjoyed this process of building their towers. They looked like little architects hard at work!

Using cut up pool noodles from the sensory bin and small blocks to build her castle.

A Cup Tower

An ice tower built outside during recess by a handful of students

Tower built from our containers in the sensory bin

Painting their own tower



Class Tower's Painting

Some of the children chose to create and draw their own towers. Later they painted their tower above  the drawing they had done earlier. After every student had painted their tower we had a completed class art piece with unique towers of various sizes, shapes and colours that we hung on our building centre wall.

Sliding into a Snail Inquiry!

You are probably wondering how on earth we went from a growing plants inquiry to now a snail inquiry in our classroom. This is what is so intriguing about an inquiry based learning environment, you never know where the children's interests will take us! As we were having a whole group conversation about different types of gardens we could have in our classroom, garden snails was brought up. So we decided to look into what it would take to have a snail garden in our classroom. I called Petsmart but they only had aquatic snails available at this time of the year. I also contacted my 13 year old nephew who has a few aquariums and loves aquatic life. He had told me that garden snails were hibernating right now but we were more than welcome to have a couple of his aquatic snails. Who doesn't like something that is free?! I didn't want to disappoint the students so although we couldn't have garden snails in our classroom in the middle of February we could still have snails that live in water! Let's see where this will take us!

A couple students painting a sign for our snail garden table



Painting our insect rocks

 

 

I saw this really cute idea on Pinterest to paint rocks like little bumblebees and ladybugs. I bought a bunch of stones from Dollarama and did an example of how to paint the rocks so the children could use them as a guide. The students could choose which insect they wanted to paint on their own rock. After our rocks dried our plan was to add them to our own clay snail display that we were going to put on  our snail garden table. 

Cute insect stones painted by the students.

Slinky the snail display

The students molded their own snail from modelling clay and added natural items such as twigs, leaves and rocks. They also used grass from their own grass cups that they were growing to add to their snail display. After, they glued their insect rock on and named their snail.
 

A student's snail display

On our snail table we left a couple markers and this "I wonder..." chart for the students to fill in on their own time. At first the children didn't have too many things that they wondered about but as we had our aquatic snails in our classroom for about a week more questions were arising.

Our completed snail garden

Snail Babies!

After coming back to school from the weekend our snails had babies! We decided not to tell the children and let them discover this amazing creation of life themselves. While one of the students was looking at the aquarium they asked me if the snails had babies. I told him I wasn't sure but maybe we could look in our snail book to see if that is what snail babies look like. We found a picture of baby snails in the book and compared that to our baby snails in the classroom. He had decided that they were definitely baby snails. It was really cute to see how excited he was to share this information with the rest of the peers in the class. It was priceless to see the look of amazement on the kid's faces as they swarmed around the snail table to see with their own eyes that our snails had babies... 40 of them!

A list of what snails eat. Now the students can bring food in from home to feed the snails.

Having a snail inquiry in our classroom not only covers some of the science expectations but it has also touched on some math (estimating how many baby snails we think there are), literacy skills (making lists, writing questions, reading non-fiction text), as well as visual arts (creating our clay snails and painting our insect rocks). Now what shall we do with all these snails??!!! I guess we need to investigate things a little further...