What communities are you part of?

"Why are there candies in a gas station?"
The children worked on a web to show which communities they are part of.  We discovered that we all belong in many different communities like a sports group, church group, music and art classes. We talked about the people who are also part of these communities like family members, teachers, coaches and friends and how each one has a shared goal and responsibility that they contribute in the group.  This shows how each one of us is an important member of a community.

They were very intrigued by the how the gas station works and also about the very friendly barber we saw on our community walk. They voted these community helpers as their project in this unit. We first made a list of questions for the gas station workers.

Paxton: Where does the gas come?
Francine: Why are there candies in the gas station?

To find out more we watched a Youtube video showing how underground fuel tanks are filled up at a Chevron gas station.  They got even more curious about fuel source so I read a book about Oil factories and the process of how fuel ends up at the gas stations. Our next project is to turn the block area into a gas station and invite other children to play and discover how underground fuel tanks work.
searching for underground fuel tank holes

working on their community maps

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Frienships start with a simple "Hello"

Image
     In this part of the inquiry the children were drawn to a story about a Boy and  a stray puppy who developed friendship as they go through the feelings of sadness, loneliness and in search of a friend. The story lines were catchy and simple enough that children repeatedly said the lines over and over again in their play. "......sad, ... no fun....all alone....why am I the only one?"       They were so attuned to the sadness of the characters that they even created their own dramatic play on the ideas of feeling alone and what to do when no one wants to play with you.  The story "Say Hello" by Jack and Michael Foreman explores the concepts of care, inclusion and open-mindedness.   At the end of the story both the boy and the dog were connected by acknowledging the presence of the other through a simple "hello". It shows us that a warm greeting and a smile is all it takes for friendships to flourish.  Christina asked: " How do you
Read more

Yoga story: Lion and the Mouse

Image
 Before we began our Yoga story of the day the children greeted the beautiful Spring sunshine with their gentle, yet energized breath. I find Sun Salutation poses are the best to revitalize and refresh the mind and body. These poses are dynamic yet focused so provide children the space to be actively engaged and be in their own space while doing the poses. Since it's Spring it also gives us the opportunity to pay gratitude to the morning sunshine and embrace its blessings as we think about the growing and changing that is happening around us Sun salutation and sky arrow poses To continue the theme of  Gratitude and Generosity, we acted the Lion and the Mouse fable using different yoga poses. The children enjoyed pretending to be the irritated Lion and the scared mouse. We discussed the lesson of the story: that each of us is important and helpful no matter what size. Then each child were given a task of helping me clean and organize the classroom.  Some spr
Read more

Unit of Inquiry: Friendship

Image
    September is a wonderful time to be experiencing new and exciting things.  As we continue to learn the new ropes and routine in school we also make new connections and build new friendships along the way.  This current Unit of Inquiry will explore Friendships.  The aim of this unit is to help children develop an understanding of: How do we develop friendly relationships, how to foster friendly relationships and the giving and receiving of friendship. Who is your friend and why?      We began the formative unit (first week) with a simple task of asking the children to tell us about one special friend.  They decorated a ginger bread person and used that to represent and talk about this friend.  It was interesting to hear their responses.  Of course, most children talked about who they played with while others talked about their family like their siblings and moms as their best friends.  However there were some disagreements in this because some children did not think that
Read more