Autumn Math Walk

 “I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”
― L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables 

What a beautiful time of year it is in Southern Ontario! We have been spending much time outside each school day exploring the changes in our school yard. The children are curious about the world around them and ask many questions about their surroundings and the autumn treasures they find. Many of their wonderings have been mathematical in nature - Why is there a pattern on the sunflower's seed head? What are those holes in the stump and where did it come from? Why is a Daddy Long Legs an arachnid and not a spider?  How do leaves change colours? Why are the clouds moving so fast in the sky?

There is math everywhere. If one looks deeply enough, there is always a mathematical connection in nature. The sunflower seeds follow the Fibonacci Sequence - a numerical pattern meant to help maximize space and fit as many seeds into the head as possible. The perfect little circles in the stump might have been caused by a wood boring insect or bird looking deep into the bark for food. Daddy Long Legs have a different body than spiders even though they have eight legs. Leaves change colour because the amount of sunlight they need to create their own food lessens in cold weather (as the Earth's axis tilts us away from the sun), resulting in a chemical change in the leaves. 

I've been motivated to continue to look for rich mathematical wonderings and opportunities for inquiry each time I'm outside - even on the weekend with my own children. I find it fascinating to see math applied in an authentic, interesting, real world connection. The math in nature is beautiful! Inspired by this mathematical beauty I have written a book called Autumn Math Walk that includes photos and narrative to help readers delve deeply into exploring math in the outside world. I've appreciated the interest in this book and loved seeing the ways educators have used the text in their classrooms. Learning from one another is so inspiring!

 

    

I'm so very excited to partner with Pembroke Publishers and offer a free teaching resource to complement my book Autumn Math Walk!

Autumn Math Walk Teacher's Guide is a free resource that can help educators understand the math that exists in the natural world, and use this information to provoke conversation and understand with children as they explore nature. Perhaps children will be inspired to author and illustrate their own Autumn Math Walk book unique to their specific surroundings!

Using QR Codes to Explore Painted Ladies

Our children have been busy observing and exploring our Painted Lady Caterpillars in the classroom. Having the opportunity to nurture a caterpillar to butterfly has given children authentic motivation to learn about Painted Ladies as they build empathy and understanding while caring for a living thing.

We are always searching for ways to integrate technology in a meaningful way that helps build our collective knowledge and experience throughout the process of learning. We want technology to compliment and support our emerging understandings and help children see its potential in their work with one another. Because our children love to go on 'hunts' around the room, we set up an activity today that had five cards with corresponding QR codes hidden around the room.

Each code looked like this and had...

...a number to indicate its order, a sentence to describe the life cycle stage being explored, and a QR code leading the child to a video showcasing that stage.  

After a quick refresher on how to use the QR code scanners, children worked in pairs to search the room for the codes, used the app to scan them, and enjoyed the detailed videos highlighting a specific stage of the butterfly's life cycle. What we love about this activity is that children get practice using the QR scanner app, learn how the codes can help access information quickly and easily, and the retrieved videos nicely compliment the text-bound information that we have been relying upon. The videos engage children in a different way than books do and re-energize the children's interest in the caterpillar centre.

We just loved the look of interest and wonder on the children's faces as they carefully watched the videos together. There were many connections as children realized that many of the videos were time lapsed; we have a lot of experience creating our own as part of our documentation explorations.

We are sharing our QR codes for those educators who might be interested in using something similar in the classroom. Just click on the link, print the codes, and use an QR code reader to access the videos. Enjoy!

Painted Ladies

We received a surprise in the mail this week! Our Painted Lady caterpillars arrived! The children were so excited to see them crawling around in their little cups! It's interesting to learn about why they spin a web (to help them move around) and why they seem to shed their end (because they are outgrowing their exoskeleton and are growing bigger). We passed them around the circle and examined them up close!

The children have been helping create our interactive caterpillar display. Many children wrote their name on our June calendar to predict when they thought the caterpillars would emerge from their cocoon. Some of our children read about the Painted Ladies to see how long their transformation would be so they could have an accurate prediction!

 

The children drew pictures of what they thought the caterpillars would look like as butterflies. We had not yet done research on Painted Ladies when the drawing were made so it's interesting to note that many children appeared to use their prior butterfly knowledge and made theirs look like Monarchs.

 

We have many books about butterflies, caterpillars and lifecycles in an appealing rustic basket. The stages of the lifecycle are pinned to the sides for easy display and access by the children.

Fun mini manipulatives showing the different stages of the caterpillar/butterfly have been fun to play with in our mini playscapes as well as sequence to tell the story of the lifecycle.

Similar to our planting journals, the children are recording their ideas and observations in the form of communal butterfly journals. Whenever a child would like to share their thoughts they are invited to add a page to these booklets.

We also have lifecycle specific vocabulary cards that the children can access when writing in the journals. These have pictures on one side and kid print on the other for easy writing support. Children can copy the word directly or refer to it after sounding it out independently.

We can't wait to add more child-created materials to the centre as the caterpillars develop and we have deeper understandings of this wonder!

Butterflies!

Some of our caterpillars have transformed into butterflies!  We observed the way they fluttered around the habitat and fanned their wings when resting. The children portrayed their observations in various ways. 

Showing movement with loose parts on the light table:

Drawing with different materials:

Painted Lady Caterpillars

Our Painted Lady caterpillars arrived! We can't wait to watch them change into butterflies!

The Story of our Painted Lady Butterflies

At the end of the month of May we received our Painted Lady Caterpillars. The children were so excited and engrossed in the experience of raising these caterpillars. At this time we were also experimenting with using iMovie as a method of sharing our documentation in a digital format. We think it's important to expose children to a variety of technologies and implement them in ways that are meaningful and enhance our inquiries.

In this video you will see the story of our butterfly experience, told with words from the children themselves. We created a class book describing our experience which will be housed in our science centre for future reference by children when they want to reflect upon this experience or use the information to support another inquiry. The book was created by the children - they wrote the words and drew the illustrations. A QR code will be attached so they can scan and find this video online if needed. For the purposes of this iMovie we digitalized the photos and separated them by inserting other relevant artifacts of learning (e.g., photos, videos, art samples) in order to tell the complete story of our experience.

It is our intent that this iMovie will help others see the amazing experience the children had raising the caterpillars to butterflies, and the joy they felt when finally seeing that journey to completion and releasing the butterflies into the world. We hope you enjoy the movie as much as we did making it!

Painted Lady Caterpillars

The timing of the arrival of our painted lady caterpillars couldn't have been more perfect!  Just as we are finishing up our best inquiry about birds and nests, another opportunity to study a life cycle arrives!

The children were so excited to get the box in the mail. We carefully removed the nine cups and examined the spiky caterpillars. 

During playtime the caterpillars were placed at the science center and the children were invited to observe them. Some were very active and squiggled about, others were quiet, and some spun a web-like material around themselves. We wondered if they were getting ready to spin their cocoon. We also had two iPads available with time elapsed videos of painted ladies emerging from their cocoons. One video was created by a grade two class in the United States that documented their exploration with caterpillars. Our children were amazed that other children could create such a thing!

Here is the link to the YouTube video for those of you who'd like to watch it at home with your children:  http://youtu.be/63B1lnqPa8k