WELCOME BACK!
We hope you have enjoyed your time off and are ready to get
back into the swing of things! We have
met many of you already, but for those of you who don’t know us we are Ms.
Cicchelli and Ms. Mused. We are both
interns in Ms. Finkelstein and Ms. Fennessey’s class this semester. We have spent several weeks getting to know
your children and have had so much fun working with them so far! We have both been working constantly on two
inquiry investigations. Inquiry lessons are semester long investigations. These types of lessons are based on the
children’s thinking and actions. They
start with the teacher asking questions and progress on from there. Ms.
Mused has been working on storytelling and Ms. Cicchelli has been working on
light and shadows. We will continue to
work on these investigations for the remainder of the semester. We hope to see all of you at curriculum night
so we can show you all of our hard work!
Ms. Cicchelli’s
Shadow Investigation:
The children have been exploring
the idea of light and shadows. We have
been discussing where shadows come from and where/when we have them. We started our investigation by exploring
plastic shapes and their colored shadows.
Lea noticed when she moved, the color of the shadow was changing. She noticed when she moved closer to the
board the shadow got “more colorful!” We
used this investigation to explore the way shadows can change when objects are
different distances away from the light source.
The next lesson we did was
exploring our shadows on the large white canvas in the gross motor room. The children noticed when the light was off
their shadows were not as bright. These
conversations lead us into thinking about what we need to have a shadow. Many of the children mentioned we need sunlight
or a flashlight in order to have a shadow.
In this picture Seena and Sarah
were experimenting with the flashlights and were trying to get their hands to
show up on the canvas.
After exploring with the canvas,
the children worked on drawing their own shadows with a partner. The children took turns tracing each other’s
shadows produced from the light of the projector. The children were exploring how the size of their
shadow changed when they moved to different distances away from the projector.
In this picture Jenna was working
hard to trace Laila’s shadow as she held her arms up high.
In this picture Sara was taking
her time drawing Sarah’s shadow. She paid close attention to the line she was
tracing. She even drew the detail of
Sarah’s fingers and her hair. The
children worked on teamwork in this lesson.
We will be continuing our
investigation of shadows throughout the rest of the semester. We will be working on reflecting on our
experiences so far, by drawing our ideas.
We will move into thinking about what times of the days we have shadows
and look into how we can make shadows. I
want the children to think about where shadows come from and what they need in
order to have a shadow. When you are at
home with your children encourage them to look for their shadows and note where
they are. Ask your children where we
have found shadows at school when we have gone on a shadow hunt.
Ms. Mused’s Investigation:
The children have
been very interested in creating and acting out stories. We started off by
examining different ways we can tell stories. The first way we explored was
through the use of gestures and body motions. The children acted out the story The Snowy Day by using their shadows
projected onto a screen. The Snowy Day
told the story of a young boy and his experiences playing out in the snow.
Based on all the snow we have accumulated this winter, I thought that the
children would enjoy acting out a snow themed tale. During this investigation
the children added their own dialogue to the story and interacted with their
environment as makeshift props. It was interesting to see how the children
perceived a certain character would act in different situations.
“Oh no! AHHH!”, Calvin exclaims as his character
slides down a hill. Calvin would regularly add his own dialogue for his
character as he acted out the motions described in the story.
As the children grew
more comfortable with taking ownership over the characters they were
portraying, the focus shifted from how the characters are moving and
interacting to why they are doing so. This deep understanding of how the
setting can affect a story would help the children with their own storytelling
by being able to justify their characters actions. We have started this
exploration by focusing on the settings of our stories and how the environment
can affect the story being told. The projector and variety of backgrounds got
the children thinking about how the setting impacts the character in the story.
In this picture,
Laila is demonstrating how the character of the wolf is hiding from the people
in the house. The reason why the wolf is hiding is because, “He doesn’t want to
be found yet because the wolf is scared of the people because they moved into
the forest and they are new.”
While determining
what characters there are in the story and how the story will progress, the
children would talk to one another in order to get everyones input. This
picture shows Calvin wondering if they could add a different element to their
story. His idea was, “What if the king needs to be saved from the
princesses?” This was a different ending
from the original of the king needing to be saved from the pirate.
The backgrounds
inspired the children create a variety of different characters. With a fantasy
background adorned with a pirate ship and a castle, Caden’s main character was
“a half pirate half wizard Tyrannosaurus Rex”. Meanwhile with a background of a
house in the woods Sara,
Seena, Laila, and
Mahdi created a story of two sisters who live in the woods and a pesky wolf who
tries to steal their cake.
To build on the
children’s interest in the setting I will provoke their thinking by reading Where the Wild Things Are. This book was
selected because the setting morphs from a room to forest, which is based on
the imagination of the main character, Max. We will examine where Max and the
Wild Things live and recreate the settings we see in the book.
We would like the families to
help us in the making of class book, so when you have an opportunity to sit
down with your child, please have them draw a picture(s) of what they think
shadows look like. The children will make a classroom story using their shadows
as their characters. We will have plenty of journal paper available for you to
take home. When your child is done with their picture, bring it back to school
so we can start to assemble our class book. Thank you for your participation!
We again, look forward to seeing all of you at curriculum night!
