This month the preschoolers have shown curiosity in everyone’s vacation. “Where did you go?” “Where is that?” Educator Bailey recently traveled to Greece and Educator Mia is currently in Korea so I thought it would be a great idea to show the children where on a globe each of us visited. That started a great discussion about where we live, where some families are from and where some of the preschoolers have visited with their families.
The following day during group play we had the globe on the table, Isaac shared we live in North America, and “You visited Europe, right?” He asked with a curious face. Right after Kimmie, Brooke, Graeme and Moyosola ran up and were all asking many more questions such as, “Do we live on earth?” and “Where is Mia again?” Once I responded, Kimmie pointed to China then Korea on the globe. Kimmie shared that she just got back from there and it was a long flight. Educator Bailey thought it would be a great idea to expand their interests and begin talking about the 7 continents.
On YouTube, Educator Bailey found an educational song titled, “The 7 Continents” by Hopscotch. They loved it, within a few days that’s all they were requesting to listen to, and I often heard many of the children singing it on their own, creating a sense of expression as they were sharing their combined interests. As educators, we set out maps of the continents and the preschoolers expanded their own learning by building a plane and pretending to travel to different places. They created a plane and spaceship using a variety of items around the classroom: chairs, sheets, cushions and some tools were used during their imaginative play.
We created individual passports and stamped them as the children travelled around the world in their imaginative play.
Soon enough, their interests grew to the solar system, they began asking questions about earth and outer space. We started looking at books, listening to the space song and soon enough we were setting out provocations based on the solar system and the preschoolers became very engaged.
Throughout the entire month, we explored the globe and the solar system to continue their ongoing interest. The children had fun coloring and creating our own continents for our room, once they were complete we posted them in our room from biggest to smallest. Many of the children have been interested in showing their parents and other educators their hard work. Raphael has often brought his mom over and shared look mom I did this, as he pointed to Australia that he made. We’ve also had many discussions and provocations set out about different cultures and different places within each continent.
One day I set out a provocation with different animals on each continent and Educator Bailey asked “Do you think you would see a polar bear in Asia?” Graeme replied “No because Africa is too hot, they like the cold.” So, he proceeded to put the polar bear on Antarctica, “Penguins come from Antarctica too right Bailey?” Moyosola asked. “Yes, you are right.” I continued.
As for the solar system, we incorporated our very own as well into our classroom. This week the children also started creating their own 3D representation of the solar system, using Styrofoam balls the children each got a few of their own and choose which planets they wanted to paint. Once they dried, we hung them up in the classroom window and are working on labeling the planets- now we have our very own 3D solar system that the children can look at and refer back to during exploration and recognize all of their work. “My favorite color is red, what planet is red?” Diana asked. “Mars is red,” Isaac shared as he handed Diana the red paint brush. “I want to paint Saturn because it has the most moons,” Isaac continued.
To continue their learning experience, in the next couple of weeks we are going to make our own mini rocket ships and create a science experiment with them. Using baking soda and vinegar we are going to see how far each one can fly in the air outside. As educators we love to enhance the children's creativity by providing a variety of loose parts and utensils to watch their creativity at work. Once they are complete the children will get an opportunity to watch all of their hard work at play and be proud of themselves, encouraging a sense of belonging and engagement through their common interests.
