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"PLAY IS OUR BRAIN'S FAVORITE WAY OF LEARNING." DIANE ACKERMAN
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WELCOME TO the PS1P BLOG |
"PLAY IS OUR BRAIN'S FAVORITE WAY OF LEARNING." DIANE ACKERMAN
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As the Key Concept of the second Line of Inquiry is form, and the related Line of Inquiry is natural resources, over the last two weeks we have been focusing on the natural sources of water from the list that we created when considering where water is found. Our list continued to grow as we learned about water resources and we added sea, ocean, rivers and streams. So first we started with the… “Sea” or “Ocean” During morning meeting we read a book entitled, Hello Ocean by Pam Muñoz Ryan which brought the children’s imagination to the beach. Some of the children started sharing their memories of going to the sea with their families. Then we first listened to the soundtrack before also watching a video clip of the ocean. After this, the children were asked if any of them had ever tasted salt water. Some children said, as was mentioned in the book, that they had tried salt water when they cried, as their tears were a bit salty. Others remembered that water in the sea is salty. We considered whether salty sea water is good for drinking, and came to the idea that it is probably safe to taste, but definitely not good for drinking every day. We also wondered whether the salty water in oceans or seas is good at making anything else possible. To explore the qualities of salty water, the children were invited to experiment with trying to make and compare salty with normal water in small groups of two or three. With each group we had two glasses of clean water. One of them we left as fresh water but to the other glass, the children add several spoons of salt to imitate sea water, and stirred. Then each child tasted a tiny bit of salt water and after that fresh water. The reaction varied from “It’s too yucky” to “I like it” and nobody was indifferent as was evident in their facial expressions. Most of the children agreed that normal water is better for drinking every day. Then what about salt water? We still wondered whether it could be good for something other than drinking. Some children suggested that Fish and dolphins can drink salt water as they live in the sea and ocean anyway” or that we can swim and play in it “when we go to the beach”. To extend children’s thinking about salt water usage, we presented them with two small plastic jewels and suggested that they drop one first into fresh water, then drop the other into the salty water. T:
- It’s going up! - It’s going down then it’s going up! - It’s floating! We discussed the interesting fact that salty water made the jewel float, while in the fresh water it sank. The other natural water resources from our list were... “Rain drops” and “Clouds” We began by watching an excerpt from a short educational video all about clouds. Earlier the children had already come up with the idea that raindrops come out from the clouds and make rain, but now we found out that tiny water drops actually come together to form the clouds! These water drops are so tiny that they float in the air and when if there are a lot, they collect in the groups and make clouds. When many tiny water droplets collect, they become too heavy to stay in the air, so they fall to the ground as rain. To see how water drops fall down as rain we created a model of a cloud using shaving foam. We used a dropper and blue food coloring to fill the cloud with ‘rain’. As the clouds filled up they got heavier and could not hold water anymore , at which point it fell down as ‘rain’. Our next focus was on... “Puddles” We started our investigation about puddles by asking children:
Then children were asked:
Children replied that we see them on the road and on the ground. After that we watched a short video on the theme, ‘Muddy Puddles’, showing how Peppa Pig and her family enjoyed time after the rain playing in muddy puddles. Then the children went outside in small groups to experiment with making puddles by pouring water on different surfaces. Experimenting with squirting and pouring water on the grass, on the sand and on the road surface, we discovered that each surface absorbs water differently, The sand soaked up the water right away, on the grass we observed the same effect. Only the road surface was good for making puddles. "Stream" and "River" Some time ago, when we explored water resources on the grounds of our school campus, we followed the school canal through the campus. This left us wondering about where the water, disappeared to after entering into the pipe and leaving campus,so we decided to organise a trip for the children to see the source of our school's stream and follow its journey to the school campus. On Wednesday morning the bus delivered us to a place in the nearby neighborhood, not too far from our school. Ms. Shakhnoza, our Uzbek Culture teacher brought us to Chartak river to the place where the small canal is diverted from the main river. We noticed that this canal was running into a big pipe underground and followed the water coursing alongside the houses through the neighborhood. The driveways in front of the houses made kind of bridges that allowed us to observe how the water went under them, entering from one side and appearing again at the other. Following the canal, we came back to school where the school security made sure that we crossed the road safely, and we went to the side of the school wall where we hoped to see the canal appearing again. We walked together alongside the stream the same way as we had when we started our inquiry, several weeks ago. After this we went back to the classroom where Ms. Shakhnoza showed the children, zooming in the Google Earth map, the route of the stream we just had followed. She also showed the children where the Chartak river originates, from Chirchiq which starts its journey high in the snowy mountains.
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