Role Playing the Farm to Shop Cycle

The children have been enjoying role playing in a farm inside our classroom. Some like to be the animals, others like to be the farmers. We added a shop to the farm to foster ideas about how produce is taken from the farm to the shops for consumers to buy.

 

  

Once children had explored this concept a bit themselves, we engaged the whole class in a role play of farm to the shop. 

 

Here is the produce he farmer grew...

 

Here are the sheep that make the wool... 

Here are the hens that lay the eggs.... 

here is the Cow that makes the milk... 

when we asked the children how the farmer would get the milk from the cow we hit a little bit of a learning pit and got stuck for awhile. They really weren't sure. There a few suggestions that at first seemed logical to the children- other things come out of some body parts after all. But we challenged that thinking because we wouldn't really want to drink something that came from there would we? 

Eventually we needed to investigate further to help us get out of this pit! So we found a ducymentary that explained how ,ilk comes from a cow. A short way into the film and some children suddenly began to call out "udder! It comes from the cow's udder." 

So glad we got that sorted out! 

Unfortunately we don't have a dairy cow here at MACC, but we did take one of the classes to look at the steer. They noticed that it didn't have an udder. We wondered why. 

We are still wondering ... 😉  

Next the driver came to pick up the produce... 

 

To take to the shop...

For us to buy...

 

I didn't get to follow up and close off our project with the Monday-Tuesday group due to chapel and assembly taking up some large chunks of our time together. 

But today we revisited the drawings the children had done after their first visit to the farm...

   

We discussed some of her things we might add to the pictures about what we know about farms. Then the children drew their thinking and teachers scribed...

 

   

Some children were still very fixated on the idea of poo being all around the farm. They were challeneged to try and explain what we had learnt about how farmers might use it and what they can do with it. Some children were quite clear about this process and others may need to investigate further. We still plan to develop our own compost system or worm farm in the coming months. 

 

  

The children then presented their drawings and explained their ideas to the class. 

Learning Outcomes
Communication
5.1 Children interact verbally and non-verbally with others for a range of purposes
5.2 Children engage with a range of texts and gain meaning from these texts

Learning
4.1 Children develop dispositions for learning such as curiosity, cooperation, confidence, creativity, commitment, enthusiasm, persistence, imagination and reflexivity as they . . .
express wonder and interest in their environments • are curious and enthusiastic participants in their learning • use play to investigate, imagine and explore ideas • participate in a variety of rich and meaningful inquiry-based experiences 
4.2 Children develop a range of skills and processes such as problem solving, enquiry, experimentation, hypothesising, researching and investigating as they . . .
* explore their environment * use reflective thinking to consider why things happen and what can be learnt from these experiences
4.3 Children transfer and adapt what they have learned from one context to another as they . . .
engage with and co-construct learning make connections between experiences, concepts and processes • use the processes of play, reflection and investigation to solve problems • apply generalisations from one situation to another transfer knowledge from one setting to another
4.4 Children resource their own learning through connecting with people, place, technologies and natural and processed materials as they . . .
engage in learning relationships • use their senses to explore natural and built environments • experience the benefi ts and pleasures of shared learning exploration *explore ideas and theories using imagination, creativity and play • use feedback from themselves and others to revise and build on an idea

Connected
2.4 Children become socially responsible and show respect for the environment as they . .
• broaden their understanding of the world in which they live *use play to investigate, project and explore new ideas • participate with others to solve problems and contribute to group outcomes • demonstrate an increasing knowledge of, and respect for natural and constructed environments • explore, infer, predict and hypothesise in order to develop an increased understanding of the interdependence between land, people, plants and animals • show growing appreciation and care for natural and constructed environments • explore relationships with other living and non-living things and observe, notice and respond to change • develop an awareness of the impact of human activity on environments and the interdependence of living things

Recycling project

Mrs Davies brought in bags full of used coffee pods this week and the children helped to scrape the coffee grounds out and sort the parts of the pod. We discussed possible ways we might recycle.

 

"We can make a worm farm."

"This is for the ant farm."

"We could make cars and these could be the wheels." 

"This could be craft." 

The next day we mixed the coffee grounds into our gardens and soil and cleaned the rest of the packaging. 

 

   

We talked about why we might recycle these instead of putting them in the bin. 

"So we can use then and make stuff." 

Playing With Clouds

Each day we make observations about the weather, including the sorts of clouds we notice in the sky. We have been dating a graph about the clouds we see each day...

 

After sharing the story The Little Cloud, by Eric Carle, we set out an invitation to play on the light box creating 'cloud art' with shaving foam. Some of the children have were immediately drawn to this experience and enjoyed creating cloud drawings, or simply being involved in the sensory exploration of the foam 'clouds'.

    

Finding and Making Patterns

We have been learning about patterns in Daily 3 Math. First the teacher makes some patterns ('I do it'), then we make one together ('we do it'), then the children make one on their own ('you do it').

 

    

 

We have shared discussions about patterns we notice in the days of the week, numbers and counting, weather and seasons. There are patterns everywhere! Patterns can help us understand how things work. 

This morning we tried a counting pattern called 'skip counting' to count to the number 20 (which is today's date). 

Let It Snow!

We have been having many discussions about weather and how clouds and rain are formed. Last week during a discussion about weather, one student said that she wished she could feel some snow. We talked about the fact that it doesn't snow near where live. I asked if she would like to play with some pretend snow. So this week we have a tub with pretend snow and animals that live in the snow. The children have really  enjoyed exploring and playing with it. Part of the experience is the science exploration of creating 'snow' by combining sodium polyacrylate (from inside a disposable nappy) with water. It actually feels cold and resembles snow.

 

  

Planting

Today some of the children were involved in preparing the soil in our vegetable garden beds and then planting our seedlings and some more seeds. 

 

Hopefully some of them grow! 

Investigating Clouds

Following up our exploring of the weather yesterday we conducted an experiment today to find out more about how clouds and rain are formed. 

 

 

(Pictures taken by Chaise and Owen).