New Unit Formative Week: a walk in the community

How We Organize Ourselves

Central Idea: The work people perform helps build community

This week the teachers are gathering what the children know about the central idea. The children come with an understanding that there are jobs in the community such as, construction workers, gardeners, winemakers, and dishwashers. They know there is work done within the daycare community such as, sweeping, washing tables, cleaning up toys and organizing books.

Yesterday the children went for a walk to 41st and Dunbar St. and walked along Dunbar to 39th Ave and noted all the business and jobs they saw. They even got to visit Olivia's dads work, he's a vet.

Today we started a map of the community focusing on the four corners of 41st and Dunbar. The children knew a lot about the Shell gas station; its an important feature of our community because "our cars need gas and without gas we'd have to walk" said Chloe. "Or take the bus" offered Rocco. The bus transfer station is right across the street. A new and used book store is on another corner. Julia thought this store might be important to some people but not to others. Kai said "If you like to read, you need a book store." The Scotia Bank is on the other corner. Many of the children have been to the bank but have no idea what the bank is for. This is an area we will explore further.

The children added pictures to the map and Adyson added a feature she knows: traffic lights and stop signs. Someone has the job of putting up traffic signs, we'll explore why this is an important job and what might happen if this job wasn't done.

Summative Week: creating an Invention

Summative week is an opportunity for the children to take all that they know and have learned about the central idea and present it in a project. The central idea is "There are similarities and differences between the way people lived long ago and the way people live today."

Over the past 6 weeks the children have explored the way things were done long ago (food preservation for winter) and how it's done today. They learned that many families still preserve food for winter, such as making jam or freezing blueberries. They learned that this practise isn't always necessary now because of the an innovation: green houses, which can provide us with fresh food in winter.

For summative week the children reflected on a problem that the teachers have noticed - at times people don't like to clean up. The children set to work developing an innovation that will do the work. Every child added an idea to be included in the machine. While building they were asked to reflect on these ideas: when should we use the cleaning machine? Will we become lazy if machines always do the work? Will the machine create more time for us to play? Does it feel good to do a good job in cleaning? What would happen to this feeling if the machine does the work for us?

Adyson's idea is to make the machine red

Attaching the arms for the grabbers

It needs 'on' and 'off' buttons!

Add caption

We called it "The Super Duper Machine"

Comparing tools from yesterday and today

Teacher Question: How have ideas and processes changed out lives?

Some innovations have been developed to meet a need, usually to take away the work from us and giving us more time to play. Today the children looked closely at some of these innovations in the daycare; the job they do, how they work, why we use them, and why we might chose not to use them and continue doing the work the way we've always done it.

The children shared stories of how they sometimes wash dishes by hand even though they own a dishwasher or how their parents still hang their clothes out to dry even though they have a dryer.

The children had hands on experience using various tools to mix flour and water together and discussed the time line of these innovations; a wooden spoon, a hand beater and an electric mixer was tried by all.

Trying a hand mixer

How does an electric mixer work?

trying the tools in the water table

Do plants grow in winter?

Child's Question: Do plants grow in the winter?

The children checked the seed packets that they had prepared in the previous week and discovered that the ones that were inside where it was warm sprouted and the ones that were kept outside in the cold didn't.

To experience this concept again the children planted the pea seeds in the planter outside and were asked if they thought they would grow. We used an upside down aquarium for a greenhouse and planted some of the seeds in the greenhouse and some outside of the greenhouse and we'll wait and see what happens. The children will observe how the invention of greenhouses impacts our ability to grow food in the winter.

The children completed an assessment to show their understanding so far of their question "Do plants grow in the winter?" based on the past weeks experiences and experiments.