What Does Inquiry Look Like in Kindergarten?

The children were engaged in the inquiry process while observing the properties of water. As they worked at learning centres the teacher invited interested children to come and discuss what they know about water and its colour. The children made comments which reflected their emerging understanding of the properties of water. These comments then acted as the basis for which to lead the investigation. The children were then prompted to wonder whether the water is the same colour as the white carnation flower. The children made all kinds of hypotheses including “the flowers will die”, “the water will change”, “the water will change the colours of the flowers”. The children all had theories about how the flowers became coloured.

children’s discoveries and documentation | crayons, wands & building blocks Thank you to all of the educators who came out to PDSB’s annual Kindergarten Conference (Inspirations and Contexts, Kindergarten Play and Inquiry) last week. It was wonderful to have a chance to meet and chat with many of you. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to share some of the documentation my students have been involved in. I thought I would post some of their documentation as well as a few discoveries they made about the worms and the composter. The children were provided with several pictures of different stages of the construction of the worm composter. The children found what they theorized to be eggs and they quickly referred to some books to see if their theories were correct. When I asked a couple of the students how they could share with others what they learned about worms, one student pointed to some documentation panels that were in our classroom and said, “We can make something like that.” The Worm Composter Do the worms like water? Do the worms like soil?

The Curious Kindergarten | Welcome to The Curious Kindergarten, a blog about the discoveries my students and I make in our full-day kindergarten! A bit about me: I have been teaching Kindergarten for several years and have recently started implementing so

Fostering partnerships between home and school… | The Curious Kindergarten One of the things that most inspires me about schools in Reggio Emilia is the connectivity they have to the families and the communities they serve. Something I am striving for this year is a stronger link between home and school. Some of the questions I have been pondering are: How do I make my students and their parents feel welcome in our learning space? This is a picture of our classroom family wall – a dedicated spot in the room that holds photographs of the children and their families (and pictures of my family and our ECE’s family too!). Another way I am trying to connect with parents this year is by sending out a weekly email which highlights some of the ideas/concepts/discussions that occurred in our class during the week. What are some ways you celebrate your students’ families and involve parents in your program? Like this: Like Loading...

Seriously? A dish rack will hold file folders? Brilliant!!: ECRP. Learning to Document in Reggio-inspired Education ShareView in Chinese (PDF)HomeJournal ContentsIssue Contents Volume 13 Number 2©The Author(s) 2011 Learning to Document in Reggio-inspired EducationCarol Anne Wien York University with Victoria Guyevskey & Noula Berdoussis This article discusses how teachers in child care and elementary schools learn to work with Reggio-inspired pedagogical documentation. While teachers grasp the value of such documentation theoretically, it is most challenging but exciting to use in practical settings. Documentation illuminates teacher theories about children’s understanding: watching such theories change through study of documentation and further teacher research profoundly influences professional development. If you have benefited from free access to ECRP, please consider making a financial contribution to ECRP so that the journal can continue to be available free to everyone. Documentation as Teacher Research Pedagogical documentation is the teacher’s story of the movement of children’s understanding.

Austin School For the Future: The Reggio Emilia approach, a conerstone to our philosophy Before reading please note that I typed this in word and copied into blogger. Some words are underlined for no apparent reason and I can't figure out how to change them. Also some of the images I got are from Let the Children Play, which is an awesome blog that I suggest anyone to follow. Thanks here you go..... I believe in a curriculum that is child based and gives each child the opportunity to explore and discover in ways which are exciting and interesting to each individual child. The Reggio Emilia approach to education is based on the following fundamentals: The child as a protagonist, the child as a collaborator, the child as a communicator, the environment as the third teacher, the teacher as partner, nurturer and guide, the teacher as a researcher, documentation as communication and the parent as partner (Cadwell, 1997, pp.5-6) The child as a protagonist- the Reggio approach emphasizes the importance of having a strong image of the child.

Information%20sheet%20-%20Guidelines%20for%20documenting%20children's%20learning.pdf Following an insect interest | learning through play Our wonderful co-ordinator Sarah worked with the tamariki to put together the Bug Hotel. Here are her instructions: How to Make a Bug Hotel Find a wooden crate or box to hold the different materials. Gather together: bundles of sticks; logs with holes drilled into the ends; dried grasses; bundles of cabbage tree leaves tied into knots; old rotted wood; bark; dried leaves in an old plant pot; or any other natural materials that you have around and think that bugs could use to hide or nest, or hibernate in over winter. The tamariki check the Bug Hotel every session and when they capture bugs they deliver them to the Bug Hotel to see if they want to stay a while. The Bug Hotel has stimulated some wonderful discussions amongst the tamariki and has become a really interesting part of our centre. This is the link to the Bug Mansion that we used as inspiration (slightly bigger than ours!) Butterfly visit Emerging into beautiful butterflies Planning to extend the insect interest Field journals

learning through play | living, learning, playing, wondering and pondering at Playcentre