The K2 children are in the thick of the Unit of Inquiry with the central idea being "People can express ideas and experiences in different ways". At this stage of the school year, children are now much more aware of their own capabilities and preferences as a learner, and hence exercise agency in determining how they communicate their ideas to others, and how they like to express themselves.
Through interacting daily with peers in learning and play, they are developing a conceptual understanding of perspective - both their own, and that of others. This has enabled them to work towards one of the learning outcomes of the unit "Our experiences and imagination can inspire us to create". Let's take a look at how children in different classes have been creating!
Turtle Class
In the previous blog post, we highlighted how the Turtle children created a role play area in the classroom with tent camping and bonfire cooking. As they played, the children were inspired by the interactions they had with others and their imagination took off, encouraging them to voice their ideas of what they wanted to add to the play. Seeing that the children connected so actively with role play as a way to express themselves, Rebecca invited them to brainstorm what role play ideas they would like to bring to life. After a vote, it was determined that they would make a castle! Over the course of a week, the children planned and created the castle. The AM class wanted wings and a dragon, while the PM class wanted a shield and a horse! Let's take a look at the children's creative process; first they had to make the castle walls...
Then onto making the horse and shield, all of it was done through the children's teamwork:
When the castle and props were completed, it was time for role play! Children utilized their social and communication skills to invent stories and express their imagination. They continued to add their ideas into the play in the form of props and costumes.
Tiger Class
The Book Parade earlier in April proved to be a very fruitful provocation for the Tiger children's inquiry into expression. The parade inspired them to create storybooks of their own (do check out your child's story on their e-portfolio), and Amy encouraged them to think about how else they can express or present the ideas from their story to others. Weaving in the children's art skills they acquired over the course of the year as well as their knowledge from the previous unit "Sharing the Planet", they decided to create a character from their own authored story using various recycled and art materials. Each character is as unique as their makers! Let's take a look at their creation process:
And some examples of their finished characters:
To view more pictures, including your child's character, please click below:
The Tiger children were so proud of their creations, and displayed them as an exhibition in the classroom. Children walking by from the other classes were very interested in the characters and it inspired them to make their own characters too! The Tigers noticed others were always looking at the exhibition, and they decided to make and hand out invitations to even the K1s to come visit their exhibition!
Dragon Class
To bridge the previous unit Sharing the Planet with the current one How We Express Ourselves, children made their own characters using the bottles they collected as part of their recycling effort. They named and described their character, and then the class decided to put the characters out in the small world role play area. Teachers were interested to see how the children will respond to this invitation- will the children simply admire the characters? Or play with them? Or perhaps even create stories with them? Turns out the children did more than spontaneous play, they took action with their characters to demonstrate the skills and understandings they've acquired throughout this unit on expression!
On top of playing with the actual characters, both classes are now photographing them to create little puppets! They are using their character puppets to do some storytelling using a background they've been painting all week. This idea was an extension of some shadow puppet play the Dragons did earlier on in the unit.
The PM class took this further and came up with the idea of creating movies with their characters. The children created stories both individually and collaboratively, showing lots of creative thinking and communication skills. You can view the
PM story videos in the album here!
Gecko Class
The Gecko children have been expressing themselves in different ways throughout the Unit of Inquiry and this week, they dove into drama! Using a familiar book that the children really enjoy, they chose scenes from Let's Go For A Drive! by Mo Willems. They focused on how Elephant and Piggie expressed themselves through their body language and gestures, and how we can do the same. The Gecko adults modeled how to do freeze frames with each other, and then the children had fun getting into pairs to dramatize their own freeze frame using different props! After practicing for some time, they were courageous and performed their scene in front of the class. Take a look at some freeze frames:
Here's a
video of the story, feel free to watch it with your child and they can teach you how to make a freeze frame together!
A parent tip:
When adults ask children "What did you do today at school?" it can be a surprisingly overwhelming question, as they do so much at school. They learn all sorts of things, and play in so many different areas of the school. Your child might end up saying "Nothing" - though of course we know that is not true at all! To encourage your child to share their school life with you, parents can model what a sharing conversation sounds like. For example, "When mommy went to work today, I had a meeting. Lots of adults and I sat around this huge table and we shared our ideas. Afterwards it was lunch! What about you?" Another strategy is to try asking more specific questions to prompt the child's remembering of experiences. Below are some suggestions!
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