Inquiring About A Praying Mantis

At the beginning of the year a dragonfly flew onto our room starting an inquiry about dragonflies. Now, in the middle of our fall inquiry, we received a praying mantis! The kids were so excited!

Observation and documentation started right away by the kids who were the most interested. 

We realized that the Mantis needed food to survive.  When they found out that it ate other insects they were a little upset. We had a discussion about the predictor/prey relationship and after that discussion they were totally fine with feeding it other insects except for dragonflies and ladybugs (They were adamant about that!). About half the class went on a hunt for live insects. I was picturing feeding it a fly or small spider....here is what they decided would be a good meal!

They caught the cricket and I put it into the Mantis' cage. We saw that he became real still. We discussed why. Some thought the Mantis was afraid because the cricket was so big. Others thought he was being sneaky to catch it. 

As we were getting ready to go home, they noticed that he caught the cricket! I thought they would be grossed out, but they were fascinated! They whipped those magnifying glasses out to get a closer look!  I wish it had happened earlier in the day so they could have observed it more and documented it, but it was time to leave. When we come back on Monday, we will do some research together to find out more about praying mantises and figure out what Praying Mantises like to eat so that we can catch his favorite insects.
We are still exploring leaves, but I will save that for next week!

Documentation of Our Color Inquiry

Here are a few photos of the documentation showing others of our journey as we inquired about color and shades. 

Wrapping Up Color and A Look At Some Small Group Interests During Play

Mrs. Garrabrant's class come over to do a color experiment with us!  We filled two bowls on each table with baking Soda and two containers were filled with vinegar. We added food coloring to the vinegar so that each table had two primary colors. Our friends looked at the materials and then whispered to their friends what they wondered. Then they whispered what they predicted would happen to their friends. 

The kids carefully dipped their cups into the vinegar, then waited for the signal to pour it into the baking  soda. I LOVED the looks on the kids faces and the collective gasp when they saw the reaction caused by mixing the vinegar and baking soda.  They had never seen anything like it!

We had them share with each other what they noticed after the two bowls overflowed. They noticed that the primary colors mixed to create a new color!

After our friends left, the kids documented what they noticed happened. A large number number of kids decided to try to create a web map to document the experiment!  It was interesting to see the different ways they recorded what they noticed!

During our exploration time, the kids finished up the last four color panels. They are now hanging up in our room. Our next step is to label them. 

I think the brown one is my favorite!  I love all of the different shades!

Mrs. Adams, who works in our office, asked us if we could make a colorful tree for the office like the ones they created as teams in our room last week. The kids were happy to do it!  

More finger muscles were made stronger by working on this project!

A group of friends had found a Lego alphabet chart. They are working on a challenge to create the whole alphabet with Legos. When they finish a letter, we take a picture of it. When we have them all, I will have some kids that are still working on letter identification identify them, put them in the right order and display them. 

We have a new friend in our room! It's a beta fish!  Right now the kids are observing and writing books about him or drawing pictures for him to hang up by his bowl at the writing station. They are also thinking of names for him and writing them on a post-it to put on a chart for name ideas. I will keep up the chart into next week. 

There has been a lot of engineering at the K'nex area!  They are planning and creating some amazing objects and presenting them to the class to show everyone what their creations can do or how they work. 

The girls have taken over the block area to make castles for fairies and butterflies!  I asked them if they would like to explore castles to help with their building!  They decided they would like some pictures and books to look at to give them ideas. I will have to work on finding some!

One group has opened up a doctor's office. They are using the clip boards to write down what is wrong with their patients, what they need to do to get better and what medicines they need.

The kids have also been asking questions about leaves which has also led into questions about the trees. They are bringing lots of leaves into our room to explore! We have started exploring this but I will save that for the next post!  

Inquiring About Color

The kids have been exploring color for the past couple of weeks. It started out with a color mixing provocation set out at the beginning of the year that only had two colors.  The reason for only two colors was that I wanted to make sure the kids would take care of the materials before I added a third color. They enjoyed creating the different shades with two colors so much, I kept it that way as long as they were interested (almost 4 weeks!).

I then set up a new one with the three primary colors to see what they would notice. 

They noticed that red and yellow make orange, blue and yellow make green, and blue and red make purple. They enjoyed playing with the colors and mixing them to make new ones but they still seemed more fascinated by the different shades they could make of the colors. They loved trying to make some darker and some lighter. 

To practice asking questions, predicting, and documenting, we put three Skittles in a bowl of water to see what would happen. The results were interesting. They predicted the color would come off.  Some thought the colors would mix! Here is what happened...if they didn't feel the urge to touch the water.  

It was interesting to see who preferred to watch what would happen naturally and who had to touch the water to see what would happen. They documented what they noticed. 

If they touched the water it mixed. One table after playing with the water and mixing them together made a connection and pointed out how they made different shades.

The interest in shades continued with them constantly pointing out different shades that they noticed all around them such as on their clothes,

and other objects in our room. 

One way they explored shades was by squeezing black, white and another color onto the back of a plate.  They turned it over, pressed down and spun the plate.  They noticed that many different lighter and darker shades could be made. 

They also explored creating different shades at the easel. 

One of the things they wondered was whether or not there were different shades of black. They debated about this for quite a while and we decided to find out! One book we read said that black was black. There were no shades. The kids were not satisfied! They felt strongly that if pink was a shade of red, than gray was a shade of black, therefore black did have shades!  One child asked, "What would happen if we tried to make different shades of black?"  I set out materials for them to make this spin art to see what different shades of black they could make. They noticed they could not make black darker, but could make it lighter!  They also explored with black and white paint at the easels. 

We decided to ask an expert about shades of black so we asked our fabulous art teacher, Mrs. Pinto. She said that they were right and gray was a shade of black (at least on a Kindergarter's level).  They were so proud of themselves!  I was proud of their persistence! 

We decided that for a project we wanted to create something to show we had learned that colos come in many different shades.  I told the kids that we needed a new color chart in our room. I loved my old one made by my kinders years ago...

But it is faded and falling apart so we are going to create a new one using some "Beautiful Stuff" that I have stored all over my room!  I set out the materials and some cups and jars.  The kids started out by organizing the materials. Right away they pointed out all of the different shades of each color they saw in the beads, feathers, etc. 

They painted canvases different shades of each color and glued objects that were different shades of the same color onto the canvas. 

Here are the ones that are finished so far. 

The kids will help write the color words to put with each color panel to help them with reading and spelling color words. 

I had noticed that a large percentage of my friends have a lot of trouble with fine motor skills. I decided to have them work those finger muscles hard with a fine motor project that goes with what we had been investigating.  My hubby, Mr. Myers mixed cement into 5 jars and we stuck a branch into each to create a little tree.  The kids took the materials and started wrapping, weaving, stringing, etc.  What a great (and much needed) workout for those finger muscles!  They were tying, braiding, twisting wire...

I was blown away by the teamwork going on. As they worked, I walked around pointing out the behaviors I saw that were showing me good teamwork such as cooperation, encouraging each other, persistence, helping others, asking team mates for help, focus, and saying please and thank you. They even walked around as they were finishing and told the other teams what a good job they had done!  Through this project, I witnessed the community building we had spent the past month working on coming together!  I think that was my favorite part of this project!

The boy who created the yellow beads above proudly exclaimed that he created wind chimes!

They proudly displayed them on their tables and they make a beautiful addition to our room!

Our school secretary asked us if we would make a multicolored one for the office! They were so excited and plan on working on it next week!  Next week, I will post the finished color chart for you!

The kids have been bringing me leaves and commenting on the different shades they are noticing. We may dive into the shades of nature next week!