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:
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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:
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:
Last week we visited with our Grade 3 buddies. They showed us some of their matter experiments. We showed them what we have been experimenting with in connection to our unit of inquiry "Light is all around us and behaves in different ways". Here we are in Grade 3's classroom viewing and participating in their experiments: Here we are in our classroom explaining what we know about light to Grade 3: Some of our Grade 3 buddies asked us questions and showed us things that they know about light which has helped to drive our inquiries and knowledge forward. Some things that came up were:
After Grade 3 left, Cailynne and Caileigh were able to explain to us what happens when light is blocked: This new knowledge has supported our developing theories about how shadows. Thanks Grade 3!
On Monday, Dillon brought some glow in the dark gloves to school. To glow though they first need light! This sparked a spontaneous inquiry into where we can find light and where the light is coming from. Our search for light also led us to notice and express our theories about shadows. We've been following this emergent inquiry all week by:
Some very interesting theories and questions are emerging which we will post about more as our inquiry continues! This week Kindergarten 1 hosted the Deepavali celebrations for the ISS Elementary School. On Tuesday, we celebrated Deepavali as a grade level learning lots about the holiday from our Deepavali experts Ms. Radhika and Mrs. Mano. We learned about important traditions during the festival and made connections to our current unit of inquiry (Light is all around us and behaves in different ways) by exploring the functions and symbolism of light at Deepavali. We also learned a lot about one of our transdisciplinary skills 'safety' as we discussed ideas for how to be safe around candles and lights that might heat up. On Friday, we presented in both Elementary School assemblies. First we shared our version of the story of Deepavali, which we had illustrated and recorded our voices for: Then we did a live presentation of our Deepavali paintings, explaining what important parts of Deepavali they represented. Here are the videos of our first and second assembly performances: Here is some of the kind feedback we got after our performance:
Happy Deepavali everyone!
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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
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