On Tuesday, the children worked in their outdoor journals, carefully observing pine cones and practicing the skill of scientific drawing. Pine cones can be found across the path leading to our playground and throughout the woods and our outdoor classroom. With all of our conversations and learning about seeds, pine cones provide an interesting seed coat to investigate.
What kinds of lines make up a pine cone?
During this experience, we talked about perspective; you can look down at a pine cone and draw what you see, or you can look from the side. We noticed the differences in the drawings as well as similarities, using the language of same and different. Some children shared that it was helpful to have a starting dot for drawing the top of the pine cone and others shared that a starting line helped when drawing the pine cone from the side.
ML and GK shared their scientific drawings of a pine cone. GK had made the choice to draw a heart next to the pine cone. The choice encouraged a conversation about following directions. While adding designs and additional symbols allows for children to be creative and playful with their work, part of Kindergarten is following directions - and part of scientific drawing is following a direction and providing your most powerful work.
GK loves to add hearts to all written work, a symbol that holds meaning, but is also one of GK's many strengths - all of the children admire GK's heart drawing skills! We talked about the lovely heart drawn next to the pine cone, noticing that it took away from the detail of the pine cone. There was no shame in adding the special symbol, but a gentle reminder for next time. I believe it's important to notice and talk about the choices the children make, honoring a child's need or want, while reminding them of the direction or expectation.
Our time in our outdoor classroom was very different this week. Following the recent wind storm, we were unsure of what the classroom would look like, or if it would be safe to play and learn in. Upon entering the woods, the children were in awe of the trees down, blocking paths. We were able to navigate between smaller trees into our classroom, an unrecognizable space. Children and adults quickly noticed the extent of the damage as well as how unsafe it was to play in - large trees balanced on smaller trees, waiting to fall down. We decided to leave the woods and walk along the outside of the woods, inspecting the damage from a safer location. As we were walking, DM took OM's hand and said, "This is the saddest day. I love our outdoor classroom!"
One parent has offered to inspect the damages and see if perhaps families can come together to cut and move the downed trees in our outdoor space. I see this as an incredible community experience, one that the children can be a part of as well. Once trees and branches are cut, children can help move the stumps, perhaps using them to help create an actual border around our outdoor space and seating in our meeting area! If you have any thoughts or ideas for how we can continue our outdoor classroom, please let me know. Until the space is safe to use again, we will be utilizing the trails and fields around our school for our outdoor experiences.
Walking along the edge of the woods, away from the large trees.
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