Investigating Pond Life

May 1, 2017
1 min read

"I want to be the pebble in the pond that creates the ripple for change." Tim Cook

This week, we took a dive into the pond. The natural formation of a pond and all of its wildlife is fascinating and fun to explore. We studied beavers, dragonflies, frogs, and all creatures of the pond habitat.

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We explored in both a real water pond and a felt pond. The children used their imaginations with both, pretending to be ducks or role playing with alligators.

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Running from alligators is what a turtle will do, so we had a turtle race using swim floaters from the dollar store as our shell. Can you make it to the finish line without losing your shell?

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Exploration often means self reflection. What better way to "reflect" than by creating self portraits. Here, we used pond pebbles to create our image in the mirror. This was also a fun fine motor exercise.

Children, children, what do you see? I see a crocodile looking at me!

Next, we investigated and then illustrated photos of pond creatures. The children drew what they saw, then captioned their photos.

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We watched a great wildlife video about beavers and how they build dams. We then offered materials to the children and asked if they could build one also. We enjoyed this team's version of a beaver dam.

One of our favorite provocations this week was the dragonfly building with loose parts and dough. Reggio inspired provocations "provoke thoughts, discussions, questions, interests, creativity and ideas." We were inspired by the names they gave their dragonflies and the creativity of their designs.