Invitations lead to play. Play leads to questioning. Questioning leads to investigating.

Yoda once said, "Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering."

Along the same vein but slightly more upbeat, a preschool teacher might say: 

"Invitations lead to play, play leads to questioning. Questioning leads to investigating.

Take the invitation to play I posted on Monday:

Remember this?

Well.. I let them play for a half an hour and  it wasn't long until I saw this:

a waterfall cascading down the table!

under the chair (into a cave)

and winding around the carpet!

another shot of the river 

It became very clear to me that my rainforest exploration needed to be an investigation about water. 

How does water help the rainforest to grow? How do rivers help animals to hunt for food? How does water help animals to stay alive? How do animals high in trees get water to stay alive? How much rain falls in the rainforest each year?  I gather these questions through multiple settings. Lunchtime discussions, questions during readalouds, play topics, and real life occurrences all contribute to our guiding questions. 

Having some direction in how to approach this lesson, we set about using our senses to investigate the sound of water. During our Mix It Up research stations we investigated the sound of rain. Thailand has been receiving a lot of rain lately--so we are all familiar with the sounds of rain. 

Cue Previous Knowledge Brainstorm!:

Rain sounds like:

"drops

beans

loud

crashing

thunder

pattering

gentle

scary

wet

loud at times and quiet at other times" 

We listened to the sounds of the rainforest. 

Then we watched how humans tried to mimic the sound of rain with an instrument. You can see the sample here.

We wondered: What does the inside of a rainstick look like? Check out this great video series called "What's Inside?" to see this father and son team hack through a rainstick with a saw and crowbar to see what it looks like inside. It satisfies some primal need in all of us to see them smash this thing to bits.

Next, we made simple rainsticks with dried beans, toilet paper tubes, rubber bands, and scrap paper. The sound of a heavy rainstorm comes when everybody shakes them as hard as they can together. 

Materials: beans, glue, markers, stamps, and dotters for decoration

With your class you can create a rainstorm!

More about this investigation later!

Other questions we will investigate: 

"Why do anacondas live near the river?" (after seeing most of the students were interested in snakes)

"How does rainfall help the plants to grow tall?" (asked during a lunchtime conversation)

"How do animals who live up high get water if they never leave the trees?" (A question asked during our nonfiction readaloud time)

"How much rain falls in a rainstorm?" (asked during a recent rainstorm in our class).

Until next time learning buddies!

Sam