This week we had a special visitor come visit. It was Ayesha's mummy from K2.2! She is an expert in Indonesian shadow puppetry so she was able to extend our thinking about how light and shadow can be used to tell a story. Thank you for helping us! Here are some photos from her visit: When we were on our light hunt we also discovered shadows! We explored what we could do with them and spontaneously created a shadow monster near the Butterfly Garden. Back in our classroom we viewed the video of our shadow monster creation and completed a See-Think-Wonder Visible Thinking Routine. To extend our thinking and answer some of our questions, we continued to play with shadows in different ways. We spent time in the hallways and outdoor spaces just outside our classroom tracing shadows and discussing where they were coming from. One morning when we were shadow tracing we tried to return to our work after our Mandarin class, but discovered the shadow was missing! We also played with shadows inside. One morning Ms. Alison and Mrs. Mano changed the position of one of the curtains in our room. This prompted an excited investigation into how the new space could be used. After a few proposals were made it was decided that the best thing to do was to used it for pretending and shows. We then discussed what next step we could take with our discoveries and ideas. Some of us wanted to make a show, some of us wanted to create a picture collage with the photos of our shadow play and one of us wanted to use the iPad to photograph the show group's work. The show group created a plan for their show: The picture collage group created this documentation using the PicCollage app and the photos they thought were the most important from our shadow curtain play:
For the last two weeks our Star Name has been Maanya. None of the letters in her name were new to us so this gave us a chance to review the letter-sound connections and actions and make connections between Maanya's name and our own names.
Maanya's special first letter is 'M', which also connected to our Gingerbread Man poem letter hunt and sort for the letters 'M' and 'R'. Today our friend Aarna turns 5 years old! We celebrated in class with a Frozen birthday cake. Yummy! Happy birthday Aarna!
This questions immediately started a lot of discussion. Some children thought no and some children thought yes. But no one was sure how to explain their thinking. We started by represented our 'yes' or 'no' answers by forming two groups and putting our thumbs up or down. Then we went outside to explore the CDs: We shared our different observations:
We then looked at photographs of real rainbows and did our best to create representational drawings: We still couldn't figure out why we could see rainbows on the CD though, so we decided to smash one to see if there were rainbow lights inside! Now we had new theories, but we still weren't exactly sure how we could see rainbows on the CD. So, we invited an expert! Max's mum teaches science in the Middle School so she visited us to explain and demonstrate how rainbows work. We learned that a rainbow happens when something like a prism, raindrop, or CD bends light, splitting it apart to show all the colours of the rainbow!
The following week we continued to explore with mirrors outside and created drawings of what we saw in the mirror when we put them on the ground. We noticed that what we could see in the mirrors was also what we could see when we looked up towards the sky!
Last week we had the chance to visit the Botanic Gardens two times -- once during the day and once during the night! There was so much anticipation leading up to our first ever field trip at night. The children discussed how we would know where to find each other in the dark, if they should wear their pyjamas, and made predictions about what we might observed. Oh the excitement! The sun sets around 7:00 PM in Singapore so we met at 6:30 PM so we could watch the world transition from day to night. Some of us made connections to discoveries we had made earlier in the week during our day visit to the gardens noticing that the shadows had changed, but that we could still see reflections in the water. Once it started to get dark, we were ready with our flashlights, glow sticks, and light up toys. What a great opportunity for us to inquire further into the behaviours of light and dark, practice safety in the dark, and take risks by having new experiences and trying new things.
These are some photos of our visit: We also wrote some thank you notes to our parent volunteers on the trip as part of our 'Notes of Gratitude' action as service project:
To help us extend and clarify our thinking we read The Very Lonely Firefly by Eric Carle. This book is about a firefly who is searching for friends by flying towards different places he sees light. The pages where the firefly sees light in the eyes of the dog, cat and owl prompted immediate discussion:
The final page of the book was also really exciting because it has fireflies that light up and blink. This made us wonder how this works: Maanya: Maybe they just put some little lights inside like little orange candles and then some batteries and then they sticked all the pages to the batteries and then they put a button on where you press it and when you press it it glows in the dark.
Dillon: That might be a firework. Libby: No because in books there's no fireworks. Cailynne: Only in the sky. Mana: Maybe the light's not inside. There's even light coming from there. [pointing to window] Maybe it's from there or even the sun or the lamp. Ms. Alison: Very interesting Mana. It sounds like you're talking about reflection. Caileigh: Or it's coming from all the lights everywhere. Maanya: No because sun is not ever going to reflect because sun is up in the sky. At the end of the story, we completed a sort grouping the pictures cards into:
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About Us
We are a group of Kindergarten 1 students at an IB World School in Singapore. Our teacher is Miss Alison. Follow us on our blog and Twitter to see how much we're learning and growing! More Blogs to Follow at ISS:Archives
June 2015
Elementary Principal (Mr. Pinchbeck)
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