April 2015

Welcome back after the break! I hope everyone enjoyed their spring vacation.

The kids came back ready to learn and we jumped right in our topic of study this month: seeds. In April we are going to talk about parts seeds are built of and how they work. Through experiments we are going to discover what do seeds need to sprout and we will learn about the life cycle of a seed producing plant. We will also look at specimens of seeds of different plants and compare their size and appearance. Our seed unit will feed the interest children are showing in the plants sprouting in the school garden and will tie in nicely with the process of constructing new gardening beds on the playground keenly observed by the children.

Before the break we have concluded our unit on land, air and water as well as different means of transportation. We started by looking at samples of land, water and air in glass containers. We then looked at different pictures of nature to determine if they are showing land, air or water and sorted them by their category. Some pictures were tricky and we had to make a judgement call as to which category they belonged to. We also looked at different types of transportation, matched pictures and objects and sorted pictures into those that fly, float or ride. We discussed what a timeline is and made our own timeline of transportation starting with… our own feet. We also talked about land and water forms and explored our models of a lake, an island, a gulf, a peninsula and so on. Children were inspired to look at land and water forms on a small scale and large, and the unit brought a renewed interest in Geography in general and tracing maps in particular.

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