My Preschool Diary

My kindergarten uses the inquiry approach to teach children. This means that we have a transdisciplinary theme which is currently "Sharing the planet". More specifically, an inquiry into the rights and responsibilities in the struggle to share finite resources with other people and other living things. The subtheme to this is our Central Idea (CI) which is "Plants sustain life and play an important role in our lives". We also have Lines Of Inquiry (LOI) which acts as a guide as to where our inquiry should head toward. 1. Plant parts and their function 2. The importance of plants to humans and the environment 3. Our responsibility toward our environment We used Kath Murdoch's inquiry cycle approach that has six stages. 1. Tuning in: At this stage, we do a provocation to find out what prior knowledge do the children (my class of 5 yo) have about this topic on plants. Provocation can be in the form of using related newspaper articles, storybooks, videos whatever yo...

  CENTRAL IDEA: "Plants sustain life and play an important role in our lives" LINES OF INQUIRY: Parts of a plant What do plants need to grow The importance of plants TUNING IN: We started this inquiry with the help of parents and urging them to do one or more of the following home activity with their child. This was to help children gain prior knowledge for the inquiry. One boy brought in this book "Kitchen Scraps" by local author, Nur'afifah Binte Mohd Hussain. It helped set the direction for our inquiry. We grew some growing kitchen scraps like carrot tops, onions and garlic. Through this activity, children learned that plants are an important food source. FINDING OUT: It is important that children are agents of their learning. Instead of spoon-feeding them information, children are encouraged to bring in their findings on plants. Here are some of the items they brought in for Show & Tell. SORTING OUT &GOING FURTHER: Children (as well as adults) are h...