The natural beauty of autumn leaves and fall harvests continue to impact our early learners as we explore, create, and imagine outdoors in our forest and school garden. As a way to integrate children’s fascinations with all that comes with autumn our team has co-created some intentional learning explorations that also connect to our student’s developing… Read More Autumn Play and Learning Invitations
This past year we’ve challenged ourselves to thinking about how kindergarten prep coverage can be responsive to student learning and well-being with considerations like the flow of the day, interests and inquiries, documentation, and the Ontario Kindergarten Curriculum. Our prep teacher coverage was assigned phys-ed for 40 minutes everyday and an extra 40 minutes at… Read More Responsive Prep Teacher in Kindergarten
Our team continues to learn about supporting student’s spatial sense and this post includes 10 new spatial reasoning invitations with printables. Our previous post on spatial reasoning and thinking called, 10 Playful Spatial Reasoning Provocations, can be viewed here. The Ontario Kindergarten Curriculum affirms the importance of expanding children’s spatial sense as it can in turn develop… Read More 10 Playful Spatial Reasoning Provocations Part 2
Our team has previously shared how we document children’s learning with tools like Seesaw and Google Forms. However, the tool we’re sharing in this post is about what we document with regards to noticing and naming the learning. It’s a compilation of “I can” statements in the form of Learning Goals in Kindergarten which correlates to the 2016… Read More Documenting with Learning Goals in Kindergarten
Let’s begin with a story. A year 2(senior kindergarten) student enters the outdoor classroom on the first day of school with his mom smiling quietly behind him. His first words are, “Look Mrs Max. I found a worm in my peach pit at breakfast. I wonder why he’s in there?” Some might think, he didn’t… Read More Creating a Culture of Curiosity in Kindergarten
Before transforming our yard into our outdoor learning playspace, our early years team shared our hopes and dreams for the children in the space. We wanted it to provide opportunities for children to develop curiosity, exploration, creativity, innovation, resilience, problem-solving skills, risk-taking, collaboration, oral language skills, mathematical understanding, and connect with nature. We also kept… Read More Planning Outdoor Learning Playspaces For All Seasons
Hallowe’en is such a fun time of the year for children and such a great opportunity for educators to leverage intentional learning based on child-led interests. Below are some experiences that we’ve provided to support problem-solving and creativity, literacy, math, sensory, and art. Loose Parts Play This qtip skeleton provocation became a loose parts hit… Read More Spooky Hallowe’en Provocations
View our new spatial reasoning blog post: 10 Playful Spatial Reasoning Provocations Part 2 here. As our kindergarten team continues to learn more about children and their development in spatial thinking and reasoning, we are continually searching for and creating meaningful provocations and experiences where children can construct their own learning in this area. We are… Read More 10 Playful Spatial Reasoning Provocations
Wondering/Driving Question: I wonder what the worm is doing in the peach pit? James(JS) One morning JS found a worm in his peach pit when mom was cutting into it at home. JS wanted to bring it into school to “investigate it and figure out what it was doing in there”. JS’s mom and he… Read More James and the Giant Wormy Peach: A Kinderland Inquiry
The weather is warming up and the littles are so very excited to get out our portable water wall. The water wall provides amazing opportunity for open-ended exploration and problem-solving using real-life materials. Since Problem-Solving and Innovation play a significant role in Ontario’s new Kindergarten Curriculum as one of the four frames, experiences like a exploring a waterfall provide a… Read More Water Wall: Designing and Documenting
inspired by play 