Community: Garbage Collectors

 Our unit is about understanding what community is and the roles people play in one.

"Maybe we could be a community!" offered Rielle

"Maybe we could make a community" added Oliver

It's clear that our clever children understand that a community consists of people doing work that helps one another, this was very evident in today's discussion and activity.

Yesterday during general play time child initiated action led the drama room to be transformed into a Fire Hall. The children eager to learn the work that firefighters do and what happens at the firehall and they've enthusiastically included this into their imaginative play. At group time today I asked the children what other community jobs are they curious about, what do they want to learn?

Firefighters - Rielle and Esme

Fixer guys - Rylan

Guys who fix houses - Tyreese

House builders - Oliver

The police - Sophie

To start us off I chose garbage collectors as it's an exciting event when they come to our school! 

What do you know already?

They pick up garbage (Rielle)

And put it in a truck (Tyreese)

Garbage goes in a can (Oliver)

They have grabber things to grab garbage (Rylan)

It goes to the garbage station (Tyreese)

There are garbage cans in our house (Sophie)

We need them or there'd be litter all around (Esme)

We watched two video's of garbage collectors, one from Vancouver and one from another city which prompted the children to ask "What colour are garbage trucks in other places?" Some debate over how often garbage gets picked up formed this question "How often does our garbage get picked up?" A third video showed mountains of garbage at the landfill, the children were intrigued, so much garbage!

Using shapes the children constructed a picture of a garbage truck. As we prepared I was struck by how all the children wanted a job to do in handing out the materials. While at this point it they haven't articulated their understanding I can see they have a sense that our group time "community" consists of people who work together, helping each other, to reach a common goal. Tyreese announced a reminder to get the glue on the shapes or they won't stick. Rylan helped Sophie when she struggled with the positioning of the shapes.