The Hideaway

A Child's Story

Last night while we were all sleeping a group of big kids came to the forest. They're big so they're not afraid of the dark woods. They knew that we liked to play here so they decided to make us this special hideaway. It's for us and for all the creatures of the forest. The birds can come to make a nest. The worms can hide under the twigs. The squirrels can collects things and hide them from the bigger animals.

A wonderful surprise waited for the children when they entered the forest.

Who could have constructed this hideaway?

These two friends sit down to draw out their theory as to how this hideaway came to be.

"Summer In the Mirrors"

When we paint with children, one of our common practices is to reach for paper or canvas. Here is an alternate approach. These two students used a series of mirrors as the backdrop for their summer painting.

A-B-C Come Follow Me

We don't have to sit children at a desk with photocopied letters to teach them the alphabets and their sounds. Move the classroom outdoors and discover the alphabet in nature!



The letter Y!



I made the letter A!

I joined the ends to make an O.

Nicola's Daisy



A great deal of the discussion around the making of this vase of daisies focused on color and shading. Nicola paid great attention to the tones, textures, as well as the warmth and coolness of her color choices.



A Baby and His Flower

Each day babies experience the wonders of life. This bunch of flowers provided a perfect opportunity to document how babies explore and store information.

The teacher offers the child the flower.

As expected he gathers information on the flowers using his senses.

He takes the flowers into the mirrored cube and sees them multiply.

Catch The Color

Working with light always produces wonderful thinking strategies with the children. A teacher's inventive thinking in filling these tubes with colored water led to this experience.



The tubes are filled with colored water and stacked. When the light hits them, at first glance, the shadows appear to be black.



Sekora takes a tube and holds it close to the screen hoping to see an orange shadow.



After moving it in many different positions she finally finds one that catches the orange and lime green shadows!

Sekora holds the blue tube close to her face and a classmates shouts, "You're turning blue!"

The Art of A Somersault

Quite a few muscles groups are required to perform the perfect somersault. The arms are needed to hold the body's weight; the abs stabilize the body and keep it from rolling to the side; the legs provide thrust as the body is lifted into the air and the gluteus maximus assists in the propulsion. Imagine then why this particular experience was fascinating to watch.

She bends at the waist and extends her legs.

"Can you see me," she asks her teachers who is snapping the photograph.

She lifts her foot to propel herself forward but she loses the position necessary to push forward.

She returns to her original pose and her friend encourages her to lift her leg.

"I can't move, I'm stuck her," she giggles.

Her friends decide to give her a demonstration.

Chapter Books-My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett

Chapter books, even for children as young as four and five, offer an alternate perspective to working with stories. Unlike the traditional picture books early childhood educators read, these types of books provide a richer context for exploring written text. Chapter books require attentiveness as the children learn to identify the characters in the story, follow the plot, and identify the settings. Over the course of the school year the children become familiar with a variety of literary terms.

A New Life

Each year we hatch chicks to mark the beginning of Spring. Watching the eggs hatch is remarkable. The chicks stay on site for a week and then we return them to the farm.



I think the egg comes first. If there's no egg then you can't have a chicken!





The baby chick pops out of the egg when he's ready! He has to work really hard to get out!



How Do Emails Travel?

Communicating through Technology is common place for this generation. In fact children as young as two are using Skype to speak to parents who are working out of the country! It's not surprising to note that children have their own ideas on how emails travel around the world. This particular experience theory on how emails travel from one side of the world to the other came to light when an SK student travelled to China for a month. She kept in touch with her friends through email.

The letter in the tubing reads:

Hi Jocelyn this is Faith and Hailey and Shannon. How are you? We miss you.



Faith's Theory :Our message to Jocelyn, who is in China for a visit, is typed on the computer and it goes through a wire. The wire is underground in a tube. The tube passes inside a pipe and the pipe goes all the way to Hong Kong, China where Jocelyn's computer is. The email goes up the wire into Jocelyn's computer and then Jocelyn can see our letter and read it.
Shannon's Theory: The letters are in the wire and they travel from Canada to China. I think that the pipes are underground and the squirrels put them all together and make sure they don't break.
Hailey adds to Shannon's thinking: Jocelyn can see the message and writes back to us and the letters go back into the wire again and come to our computer in the classroom.



Everyone Needs A Mother, Even Martians!

Storybooks and Movies, what a wonderful combination. Watching a favorite movie come to life presents many exceptional learning opportunities. Just why do we need mothers? Have you ever thought to ask your children this interesting question?
After reading the book and before watching the movie, Mars Needs Moms, the children designed these Martians and explained why each of them needed a mother. As you'll see the needs of the Martian children are much the same as the children here on Earth; mothers exist to provide tender loving care, nourishment, meet basic needs, to cart children around, and to be a perfect play mate.
The joys of Motherhood!



This is Mikayla. She  likes to watch movies. She's a really good dancer. She likes to play with her toys. Mikayla needs a mom to tuck her in bed at night.



This is Earth. It's not friendly, don't touch it because it's poisonous. It shoots water out of it's nose, and eats worms, and flowers. Earth needs a mom so she can feed him and play with him.



Mickey Mouse is nice, she is a girl. She likes to eat bread, and soup. She likes to make puzzles. She needs a mom in case she gets hurt, the mom can help her.



Leelan does the splits and the flips. He likes to go on dragons, and he likes to fight dragons. He needs a mom to help him learn to use a sword so he can fight better. He likes to play with Leav and Alan. They go on the swings, the monkey bars, and dance.



This is Carrot. Carrot needs a mother to play with and tuck her in at night.



Testing a Child's Theory

Giada discovered a fallen tree branch in the playground. It already had tiny buds waiting to bloom.  How could she save it?

"I want to keep this so it will grow big flowers!" she said.

"How can you keep it?" the teacher asked.

"We can take it inside and put it in some water to make it grow."

So the teacher placed the branch in a container of water and over the course of a few weeks the tiny buds began to open.

"What happened?" the teacher asked.

"My buds did grow!" she replied.

Giada's theory was correct-a little water preserved her fallen tree branch.