5. BECOMING AWARE OF SHAPES
SEPTEMBER 2012
The children carefully select manipulatives to trace in order to gain a further
understanding of the visual composition of our object of study.
29. CREATING A BACKGROUND
Jen: Where does your spacecraft take off?
Leo: they don’t take off, they lift off.
Moshe: Where do they lift off?
Johnny: A launch pad.
Jen What would you find on a launch pad?
Elli: A building, where people watch from…
Alexander: Benches, for other people to watch.
Moshe: How do the astronauts get to the craft?
Ariella: They use a path.
Johnny: A train brings them to the launch pad.
35. SPACESHIP OR ROCKETSHIP?
• Ongoing discussions continuously returned to one active dispute: Are we
building a space ship or a Rocket ship?
• What started off as a simple point of contention became an oppurtunity for
coexploration.
• What is a Spaceship? What is a Rocketship? What is the difference between
them?
• We explored a book which informed us of the definitional distinction and the
following conversation ensued:
Johnny: It’s a Rocketship
Ellie: No, it’s a Spaceship.
Leo: It’s both. These part are the Rockets.
Ariella: Yeah, and this part is the Spaceship.
40. WHAT WE LEARNED
• Social-Emotional Development:
• Individual Work- acknowledgment of own capabilities
• Group Work- acknowledgement of others abilities
Cooperation Patience The Democratic Process
• Language and Literacy Development:
• Language: Conversations, comprehension of
meaning, group storytelling, and writing
• Physical: fine motor skills
41. WHAT WE LEARNED
• Cognitive: Hands on and abstract planning, curiosity and
initiative, engagement and persistence, memory and knowledge
• Math: quantity, counting, classification, measurement, shapes.
• The children show a pronounced interest in the subject matter
as we progress though co-research and various forms of
expression. They show a great depth in their understandings of
explored concepts and independently revisit favorite topics.
Utilizing various recycled materials, shape
manipulatives, assorted paper, paint, pastels and other
mediums, the children’s observations have been very
rich, insightful and detailed.
