Virtual Bird Count

“There is an unreasonable joy to be had from the observation of small birds going about their bright, oblivious business.”
 Grant Hutchison

 

Colder weather and light snow this week have inspired new observations during outdoor play and exploration. The children have noticed birds hiding in the trees. It's been fun to watch them flit from branch to branch, observe their tracks in the snow and identify their different calls. I hoped to continue with these observations indoors. I introduced Cornell's live bird cam and invited children to spend time observing the animals that visited the different feeders. The children were enthralled with the quick, happy little birds as they flew in and out of the frame and gobbled up the seed.

The next day I asked children to predict which birds they thought might be at the feeders. We spent time drawing our guesses on a graphic organizer. I wanted to capitalize on the children's interest in the birds and integrate math and literacy into the experience. I also displayed posters from our library that had illustrations of common North American birds to be used as reference.

As the children observed the feeders they tracked what they saw on their charts. After ten minutes of watching we calculated and shared our results. Blue jays appeared the most!

This is an easy to implement activity that brings the outdoors inside! Click here for a free printable Bird Count tracking sheet children can use to record birds.

Duck or Farmer Brown?

Our children love books by Doreen Cronin! We invited them to vote for their favourite character using unifix cubes at our daily 'question of the day'. 

This activity integrates literacy and numeracy. Children discuss their comprehension of the book as they compare the characters, often revisiting aspects of the text ("I like Duck best because he plays tricks on Farmer Brown." "I like Farmer Brown best because he is easy to fool."). They compare the number of votes for each character, comparing the length of the connected cubes to see who has the most votes or by counting each cube to get an exact count. 

Many children were not surprised that Duck was voted our favourite character!

Snack Survey

We try to embed math and literacy into every center. Today the children spent time discussing and then voting for our favourite character from the book "Pug the Fibber" when visiting snack. 

Snack Question

Each day at snack our children can create their own question.  Children who visit snack are encouraged to read and respond to the question. Eventually we will leave the paper blank and children can independently write the whole question. 

Class Surveys

Many children spent time today conducting their own surveys. We placed paper and clipboards out at the math center in the hopes of enticing them into some surveying.

It was interesting to see what they asked of their peers...

"Do you like Christmas? Yes or No."

"Do you like cats or dogs?"

"Do you like cats or bats?"

"Do you like regular trucks or semi-trucks?"

Everyone was very eager to write their name on a survey.

Once each name was included on the list, the child conducting the survey was eager to see which choice was the most popular.

The Trucks are Stuck!

We read a great book today called The Trucks are Stuck by Judy Sierra. In this story a variety of vehicles become stuck in some very deep, sticky mud. The children were able to chime along with the story and predict what would happen next due to the patterning nature of the book.

First a pizza van gets stuck.
Next a police car gets stuck.
Then a tow truck gets stuck.
Then a backhoe gets stuck.
Finally a fire truck gets stuck.

At the end of the story a group of preschool children who are nearby race to the recue and help dig out each of the vehicles.

To extend our literacy experience and integrate some math into our circle time, we asked the children to vote for their favourite vehicle from the story. The pizza van overwhelmingly won with a vote of 13!

We are focusing on helping our children to understand the comprehension elements of stories (who, what, where, when, why, and how) and retelling the events in proper sequence. We use the words first, next, then, and finally to help describe the order of events. To enrich your literacy experiences at home, why don't you consider using these words too when reading stories with your children?

During play time we decided to create the setting of the story in our sand table - the perfect place to have a large, messy mud puddle!  The children helped us gather the various vehicles from around the classroom. They carefully observed the vehicles to make sure that each matched the description in the book. They also made sure that the preschool children used at the center were animals (and not our little people) as the children in the book were animal figures. One child made a pizza van because we did not have one.

The children spent time working together exploring the mud and retelling the story with some adult prompting.

Some Ontario Curriculum expectations these activities fulfilled includes:

1.2   identify and talk about their own interests and preferences

1.6 use language to talk about their thinking, to reflect, and to solve problems

2.9 retell stories, in proper sequence, that have been read by and with the EL–K team, using pictures in the book and/or props (e.g., use props such as finger puppets or flannel-board characters; use plastic models at the sand table to tell the story “The Gingerbread Man”)

DM5.2 collect objects and data and make representations of their observations, using concrete graphs