NZ Teacher

To help keep "THE BLOCK HOUSE" safe we moved the shelf away from the wall to the other side of the carpet providing a new, and safer, space for the house to be built. The letters: THE BLOCK HOUSE were written on A4 paper and attached to the bulletin board. Some of the children were interested in the letters and matching them with the names of the children in the class. The letter "A" had to be added because there are 5 children who begin with the letter A in our classroom this year.

One of the children talked about the OHP light being hot.  The word HOT was written on a card. He thought the word was NO because that's the word we write the most - for NO breaking. He was soon saying HOT when he looked at the word. He carried the card around with him and propped it up against the magnifying viewer.  A high interest word for a child interested in science and all things hot.

When planting sunflower seeds, one of the children wanted to do it on his own.  He got a white plastic bottle from the recyclables shelf, added some dirt, a couple of sunflower seeds, water and took it outside to put it in the sun.  Such independence. Such initiative.  It was fascinating to see that different children were interested in different aspects of the process. 

They wanted to use the wooden strips to stick to the house. We had some sticky dots which the children were able to use to attach the wooden strips to make the dolls house into a jail. It became a collaborative project and something we, the teachers, had not envisioned. The joy of letting the children lead is seeing what they decide to do at any given moment.

One of the boys had been heating the cymbals up on the OHP. He noticed that the metal on the cymbals was different colors. He wondered if it was because of the heat. He decided to put the blue tape over the cymbals to see what would happen. Scientific thinking in action. Other children are around to see what happens as he experiments with the heat from the OHP.

 The OHP became a "generator". There was talk about the heat that came from the light. Safety goggles had to be used as well as gloves for protection from the heat. It was "dangerous". The cymbals were put onto the top of the OHP and they began to heat up. There was a great deal of excitement around the generator. Collaboration, problem solving, language and intrigue.