Happy Thoughts
12/22/2017
As we entered the last week of school before winter break, I found myself reflecting on the year thus far and being so grateful. I am grateful to be able to get to know all of our wonderful explorers. To learn what makes them laugh, what makes them excited, what brings them joy. It has been a privilege to watch them learn, to see them connecting ideas and experiences, and see their faces when they discover something new about our world. I am so grateful to have such engaged learners who readily share their ideas and love. Thank you families for sharing your students with me and giving me the opportunity to be their teacher. I have loved this semester and am looking forward to the next.
Construction Site Tour
12/16/2017
Building with wrapping paper blocks To wrap up our building study, we spent this week talking about the inside of buildings. We talked about how a building becomes a library or grocery store or a school depends a lot on the inside design and what is put into the building. On Monday we had a guest speaker from RIM Design who came and talked to our students about all the designing, materials, and planning that go into the interior of a building. How you need to think about the people who will be in the building (elderly, children, sick, adults) and what needs they have. She showed us interior blueprints, computer mock ups, and photos of the final product. Plus she brought in lots of samples for us to add to our materials collection. At the end of the day Friday, we had the best capstone to our building unit. Both the explores and beginners took a tour of a real construction site. Mr. Jerry guided us through a tour of the church construction next door. He showed the students the lifts the workers use, the wood they build the walls from, showed where and how the foundation will be poured, where the stage and stadium seating will be, how they will use a giant crane to lift the heating/cooling system into place. The students were enthralled to see all the parts of this site visit. This tour allowed them to put together all the topics we have been learning about; seeing first hand what a building is made of, where pipes and wires go, how you build a foundation, they even saw some of the tools in use. I couldn't have asked for a better end to our unit. This is what PNA is all about, giving students hands on, experiential learning that connects to the real world. Our family breakfast on friday was a great success. The students talked about it for the rest of the day. I love being able to have you all come in and share with our explores in their learning and classroom environment. They are so excited about building and testing and creating that it is great to see them share this love of learning with you all. Thank you for taking the time to be there.
Taking Learning Outside the Classroom
12/11/2017
Our guest speaker, Josienne Roe, a project manager and engineer, shared with our class her experience working with a team to design and build a building on the North Slope. She explained the challenges, special building materials, and tools needed to build a building on frozen tundra far away from stores and traditional airports. She also took the time to answer our many questions about how all the different parts of buildings come together. Having visitors come into our class is a great way for our students to feel connected to the community and for them to learn about new ideas and topics. Our field trip to Home Depot really allowed the students to explore in depth the subject of tools. We were able to look at all the power tools, see all the different types and sizes of hand tools, explore all the lengths and sizes of bolts and screws and learn the difference in building purpose. This was such a fun and tactile experience. It was true hands-on learning! The students we excited to find something new and interesting on each aisle, to see in real life what we had read in books or pretended in the construction zone. I enjoyed showing them the materials used to make foundations, since we had talked so much about them last week. Our Home Depot guide did a great job allowing us to explore and investigate, as well provide a demonstration of the table saw and proper safety equipment. In the workshop, building their tree ornaments, the students were so focused and engaged with real hammers and nails. They all felt so proud when they were done. Being able to take our learning and investigating out of the classroom, and out of the school, into the community is such a wonderful experience for our explorers. They learn that they are studying real life topics that matter in the world of adults, and they learn that they matter in that world, even as a preschooler. Painting with tools
Building Strong
12/2/2017
This week we investigated the questions "what are buildings made of?" and "what makes buildings strong?" We read "The Three Javelinas" (and other three little pigs books) to start thinking how different building materials affect how sturdy a building is. The students got to try their hand at building their own house out of a variety of materials and then seeing if it withstood the big bad wolf (a hairdryer)! After this we read books about how buildings are constructed and looked at the building materials used. We explored the building materials in our collection and put a sample of them to the hair dryer test; seeing which items stayed in place. Our next experiments centered on how the design of buildings determined their strength. We used small wooden unit cubes to see how tall we could build a tower. We discovered that a large, flat foundation was necessary to build tall. Our students also discovered that stacking the blocks straight, using a pyramid design, and reinforcing with support blocks all helped to create a sturdy tower that could be made taller. Using plastic cups, cardboard, and toilet paper tubes the students further explored tall building design, engineering many different structures that could support multiple levels. Finally we looked at blueprints, and talked about how architects and engineers use this design knowledge to create building plans for actual buildings. We drew our own blueprints, then combined all our ideas into one big blueprint of a building we wanted to build with boxes. We will be working on this project with the Beginers to create a large box building that the school can use for class meetings and story times. We are excited to have this opportunity to share our building learning with our school. Our EK Explores brought in over our quota of green bean for the Thanksgiving Blessing! As a reward, we were able to play on the large snow pile by the back hill. They loved the climbing and slipping and sliding. This week they also really enjoyed our sand table construction zone, new painting easels, and porcelain tile samples.
And of course Friday's Concert was wonderful. I am so proud of all our explores. Getting up on that big stage and singing for everyone. They did so well! |
Anna RamseyArchives
April 2021
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