With summer coming to an end, here at Discovery Child Care we are making the most of the warm months while they last! This month we did some investigations into light, built some amazing structures, went on the search for caterpillars, read First Nations stories and much, much more!
Learning about First Nations
This week was filled with wonderful presentations and collaborations, while we explored all things First Nations. Alanah brought in some special family items to share. She taught us about the significance of dream catchers, of feathers, and showed us some beautiful pouches made of animal hide and beads.
She talked about how hunters use every part of the animal that they
We read many Indigenous stories and learned that animals and nature are held in high regard. We talked about how important it is to show our gratitude for what nature gives us, and about ways we can give back to the earth.
Jessica and her Preschool classroom taught us all about gratitude circles and showed us how speaking thanks from the heart was a wonderful way to feel connected to each other. Thank you to Jessica and her class for teaching the big kids a new way to give thanks, we will be doing this often!
Another big thanks goes to NC and her family, who are First Nations, and who provided us with some amazing items, stories, and videos to teach us even more! NC shared some gorgeous traditional clothing and modeled for us what she would wear when she did her traditional dancing.
We learned about drumming, pow wows, and so much more. Once again, thank you so much for sharing so much of your family and your culture with us, it has been such a rewarding and amazing experience for the Campers and teachers alike!
Gichi miigwech! (thank you very much in Ojibwe).
Building, building, building!
The Campers have spent this week building with a variety of materials and blocks of all textures, shapes, and sizes. We used large and small wooden blocks, recyclables, foam blocks, Lego, marble works, tinker toy blocks, and more!
What creative and skilled builders we have in our camp! We have had some competitive fun building group structures with materials we found in nature, and the teams came up with some great concepts including a fairy house, a campfire, a bridge, and miniature houses. We learned about how nature and wildlife provide us with many amazing examples of construction including bird nests, beehives, beaver dams, fox and rabbit dens, spider webs and so many more!
The highlight of our week was our trip to Home Depot where we got to use real tools and construct our own planters! We practiced safety by carefully hammering nails, using wood glue, and helping our friends to problem solve and create! What great collaborative fun! A big thank you to Home Depot for hosting our construction craze party!
On the search for caterpillars
The Kinders have been finding caterpillars everywhere! The month of August has been filled with exploring all different kinds we have found in our Nature Classroom. I.W. found two monarch caterpillars on the milkweed plants. We brought them into our classroom, and a few days later we were very surprised to see two baby monarch caterpillars on some leaves. R.C. also found a tiny caterpillar that she wanted to bring inside. It quickly attached itself to the top of the habitat. When it finally hatched, we noticed it was a tiny moth.
All of this excitement led us to search outside for other caterpillars and we were not disappointed. We found so many different types of caterpillars. After some investigation, we realized that they are not all the same. Some of them will turn into butterflies and some will become moths.
We discussed some of the differences between moths and butterflies. Did you know that moths are dull in colour and butterflies are bright in colour? Moths also have thicker bodies and have hair on their wings and butterflies have thinner bodies and scales on their wings. Moths are nocturnal which means they are up at night and butterflies are diurnal which means active during the day.
We didn’t realize how very different they actually are. We’re curious to see what other types of caterpillars are lurking around our Nature Classroom. Stay tuned…
Investigating light
The preschoolers have been curiously investigating light, shadows, and rainbows over the past week. To enrich their learning further, we embarked on a group project to create a reflective light box. We worked collaboratively to add components to our light box such as reflective paper, paint, and eye holes to look through. We noticed how the beautiful morning sun reflected on the paper and cast rainbows all around our room. The children were curious: where did these rainbows come from?
We began talking about the sun and the effects it has on mirrors and reflecting. The next day, we brought our light box outside on a beautiful sunny day to see how the natural environment would provoke the children’s learning further.
We found a perfect sunny spot in the Nature Classroom and watched as light, shadow, and rainbows engulfed our Nature Classroom. The light acted as a natural invitation to the other children and they were curious to see: “How can we control light?” B.F., A.S. and C.K. noticed that as they moved the mirrors the light got bigger or smaller and C.K. said, “I can make the light dance.”
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