Our Mini Ocean Inquiry

I had noticed an interest in ocean creatures, but not enough for it to be a large scale inquiry so I thought it would be perfect for this last week before spring break!  I set out some creatures and items from the ocean to look closer, explore, wonder and document what they notice.

Here is some of the writing that happened in this area!

I also put together some small world play in the sand so that they could create stories with-in their play! Small World Play has been a favorite area for this group!

Here is another opportunity to come up with ocean stories in our library area:

I set out some beach colors on one side of the easel and ocean colors on the other side and the kids collaboratively worked on the background for a small mural as our mini project.

I left the colors after the background was finished so the kids could paint ocean inspired paintings.

I set out books about ocean creatures and the kids who were interested could read about them and then pick one to paint and label for our mural.

Here is our finished mural:

Here are a few other experiences going on in our room.  In our literacy area, I put out a couple new ways to practice sight words:

Here a partner hides the puff ball under a shell.  Their partner turns over a shell.  If the puff ball isn't there, they can leave it turned over if they can read the word.  Their partner can help them.  They keep turning over shells and reading the words until they find the puff ball. Then it is their turn to hide it.

The next one is for them to use the sight word rings, or get their data folders to practice words they haven't mastered yet by making them with play dough.

I switched out our colored clay with all white clay.  I was amazed at the difference in their sculptures!  I am not sure why, but without the colors, their sculptures have become amazing!  I can't believe the detail they are adding to their sculptures.  They are more focussed here also. They will work for days on creating clay stories here and then write them down for story workshop.  I did not see this focus and detail when they used different colors!

We have started clearing our garden to get it ready for planting after spring break!  They want to plant something we can eat and some flowers.  They are very excited to get started!

They are also noticing that gardening is very hard work but they love it!  They are pulling out weeds and making sure they get the roots as we talked about why we need to make sure none grow in our garden.  We have to really dig in to get the roots out!

That is all until our next inquiry!  I hope everyone has an amazing spring break!