Making Shadows

We love to make shadows.  You need light to make a shadow.
By Kindergarten Room 1

The blog post above was our shared writing for the day. The children decided what to say and helped me to spell the words. Before publishing we talked about how "kid spell" is perfect for us in kindergarten but if we are going to publish our writing, that means other people will be reading our writing. And that means that we have to use "book spell".

We spent time in the dark room again today making shadows. We learned that:
- you need light to make a shadow
- you need to be in front of the light to make a shadow
- our shadows got bigger the closer to the light we got
- in order to get rid of our shadows we had to go behind the light

After playing with shadows in the dark room, we tried making shadows using the projector and the Smart Board. I introduced two "Scientist" words to the children; opaque and transparent. We learned that a shadow is actually the absence of light. Things that are opaque make black shadows because the light cannot go through them. When light can travel through an object, it is called transparent. We noticed that some of the items we chose to experiment with were transparent but the white light from the projector went through the item (i.e. coloured cellophane) and that colour showed up on the screen. One student selected a mirror to experiment with. As predicted, the mirror was opaque and created a black shadow...but what an amazing discovery when we all noticed that the mirror reflected the light! Tomorrow we will play with reflection.

Playing with Light

Our class has become interested in light and shadows thanks to our new overhead projector centre. The students love creating designs on the overhead and figuring out what will show up in colour and what will be black. Today we went into "the dark room" across the hallway that does not have any windows. We turned off the lights and used flashlights to explore light. Here are some things we noticed:
- I noticed that when I covered the light with my hand, my hand turned red!
- When you go close to the wall, the light gets smaller.
- When you go far away from the wall, the light gets bigger.
- When I put my hand in front of the light, I can make shadows.
- Light goes in a straight line.
- I wonder why I can see my blood when I put the flashlight on my hand?

This is what we look like with light from above.

Playing light tag.

Our red hands.

We look spooky when we are lit from below!

Starry Night

We studied Vincent Van Gogh's famous painting, "Starry Night". The students noticed that the stars in the night sky are not actually star shaped. They are various colours of yellow all mixed together. They also noticed that the lines that Van Gogh used makes it look like it is windy in the picture. We painted our own version of "Starry Night" using white and yellow paint on blue paper. We used Q-tips to apply the paint. We used dots and lines just like Van Gogh to create our stars, moon and wind. We added white to the yellow paint to make different tints of yellow. After the paint dried we created our town silhouettes by cutting shapes out of black construction paper.

How to Catch a Star

After reading Oliver Jeffers' "How to Catch a Star" we created these beautiful watercolour paintings. First we painted the watercolour paper with water. Next we used an eye dropper to drip blue and turquoise liquid watercolour paint on the paper. The colours mixed and pooled together. Next we sprinkled some coarse salt on the paper. When the paint was dry we brushed the salt off and noticed that where the salt was, the colour is different. Finally we learned how to draw a star on yellow construction paper and then worked really hard to cut it out. We glued the star on our night sky. This art inspired us to write about how we would go about catching a star!

Nature Alphabet

Over the past few years I have been trying to reduce the amount of store bought items on the walls in the classroom and replace them with student created resources. Our alphabet is an example of this. In September we went on a nature walk and collected a variety of natural items. Back in the classroom we arranged the natural items in the shape of the letters of the alphabet. I took a picture of each letter and put it into a frame. This a great way for the kids to make the classroom their own as well as to bring a natural element into the classroom. We also worked our fine motor muscles by carefully placing the rocks and berries just so.

For our number line we went on a number hunt in the community. Armed with our iPads, we scoured the neighbourhood for numbers. We found out that numbers are everywhere!!! Our number line to 10 is made up of the pictures we took on our walk. For numbers 11-20 we used items in our classroom to build the numbers.

Documenting Our Learning

Every day we are busy learning through play. We plan and build in the block centre like architects. We write, create, paint, draw and read like authors and artists. We explore reflection, light and magnetism like scientists. And every day when we go home, parents ask "What did you do today?". I bet the answer is often "Nothing". Well, we didn't do "nothing"! We have begun to document our learning, art, structures and creations with pictures. Take a look and see what we have been learning!

Jackson Pollock

Hello everyone in the world!

We learned about Jackson Pollock. He made art with paint. He drizzled and splattered the paint on the canvas. We think his art is interesting and beautiful. We got to paint just like Jackson Pollock.

From, Kindergarten Room 1