The Wonderful World of Kindergarten

Welcome to our Reggio Emilia inspired classroom at Dr. David Suzuki School.
JoAnne Pizzuto, OCT & Jocelyne Brent, RECE, BASc (Hons)
Showing posts with label natural materials. Show all posts
Showing posts with label natural materials. Show all posts

Monday, 7 December 2015

A Rose By Any Other Name

A single rose can be my garden,
A single friend, my world.
~ Leo Buscaglia~
Zen has been exploring her natural artistic talent. Taking a break from sculpting, she began filling page after page with many drawings. Mrs. Brent introduced her to the book, Look at Me!
(Click on the link to hear the story) 
In this story, a little girl named Madison gets a rose painted on her face. Everything is fine until the rose grows! Zen was excited to see the roses begin to cover Madison and commented on how beautiful she looked. She shared the story with Gemma. And...what do you know? 
Gemma had discovered roses that Mrs. Pizzuto had brought to school that day! 

Zen and Gemma were inspired by each other. Gemma, who had been examining the roses, wanted to draw. Zen, who had discovered a rose covered story girl, wanted to examine the roses.
 
When Gemma was noticing how the rose petal swirled around each other, they began to fall off.
The girls began to take the petals off the roses. 
Art and Science united!
Swirls of colours and green stems were being drawn. Just like the roses on the little girl, more and more children appeared at Zen and Gemma's activity. Gemma discovered what the inside of a rose looks like. The stem had tiny, delicate strands with soft yellow tops. Were they seeds?
"I'm gonna plant some petals and grow some more roses."
"I'm gonna plant the seeds on top." 

Zen examined the roses. She touch one of the leaves saying, "Feel it or else you won't know. It's spikes!"
She drew quickly and deliberately. Her roses were in the shapes of buds. The lines swirled at the top.
Annabeth drew circles and swirls. She used the magnifier to examine the stem without the petals. 
On some of her swirls and circles, she added dots.
Hasny drew slowly. Her roses were open. They had roots at the bottom. Hasny watched others and talked about the roses. She noticed the underside of the flowers and added green triangles to the bottom of the flowers she had drawn. 
"See everybody. Look. There's green leaves at the bottom."
 
Ivy, Vivienne and Megan joined the activity. Ivy brought glue. She had another idea. The children began to draw stems and glue the petals to become the flowers in their garden pictures. Vivienne drew on the petals before she glued them. The marks left traces. She drew a 'V' for Vivienne.
When the petals ran out. Vivienne cut petals out of paper and coloured them.
Gemma gathered a handful of petals to take home, and used petals to make a garden picture.
 
Ivy used the petals, the underside leaves and the rose stem! She was making a special picture for Mom.
 
 
The children lead their learning in the wonderful world of kindergarten!

Wednesday, 11 November 2015

Kindergartners As Contractors!


The children have been very busy hammering away the past two weeks with recycled wood that has been donated by Canada Construction and Restoration.







The children decided that our outdoor classroom needed a new tree house and they were going to be the ones to build it. The children knew that before a structure can begin to be built that a blueprint must be drawn up first. 
"We need a blueprint, because if we don't have one the builders won't know what to build." said Donovan.
The sketch pads and pencils came out and the children went right to work.









We decided to move our outdoor project inside because we knew that building a tree house was going to take lots of time and hard work. We didn't want any rainy weather condition to come in the way of  getting our project done. The children went right to work and started moving all the wood and building materials into the spare portable located right outside of our outdoor classroom. The children called it "The Cottage."


Our amazing lunch aide Greg came in to help with the project and show off his expertise.


















 
Our day came quickly to an end and the materials had to be put away. First thing tomorrow morning the project will continue. Please stay tuned for the updates to our new tree house that the children have been  working so hard on.



Thursday November 12, 2015- Today's progress






















The children worked so hard again today. They are really starting to see what the end product is going to look like. They started discussing what colour the walls, floor and roof will be and of course the interior design team went straight to work.



Stay tuned for tomorrows progress! 

Friday November 13, 2015- Today the children worked hard at sanding the tree fort up, making sure all the rough edges became smooth and got it ready for painting.


After the children were finished sanding they were encouraged to design the image they will be painting on the tree fort.

Monday morning the children will begin to paint!

Monday November 16. 2015





The finished product!