This year our district kindergarten teachers have decided to explore Project Based-Learning for our professional development. It has been an exciting exploration and that has had a huge impact on my ideas for classroom planning. I am still learning as I go, but here is a glimpse at my first attempt at implementing PBL in my room...
To start... I chose a topic that was already important to my five year olds, the movie 'Frozen'. One of our students had just come back from Disneyland and the children were ecstatic when she shared pictures standing beside Elsa and Anna. A heated debate began as to whether Elsa and Anna were 'real' or just pretending to be the actual princesses. This sparked the driving question for our project, 'Where in the world could 'Frozen' have taken place?"
We brainstormed as a group. The discussion was fascinating as it showed the various levels of understanding and personal experience each child had with the concept of 'the world'. One child believed it happened in the 'North' because he knew north meant cold, and then suggested Edmonton as it was a place he had visited that he knew was cold. Many jumped to vacation experiences, (suggestions such as Punta Cana, Mexico, and Florida), because they are outside of where we lived. There was quite a bit of excitement and certainty that it must have happened in Disneyworld because that was 'where the princesses are', but my recent little visitor piped up that it was really hot there and they didn't get snow.
Looking for clues in the movie...
We watched the first five minutes of the video in search of clues. I let the children pick out what they thought was meaningful for our search.
The first clue they focused on was the Ice Cutters.
Why were they cutting blocks of ice? How were they doing it? Do people really cut ice blocks?
The children had great theories as to the why- to build ice castles, melt into drinking water, and make ice sculptures from. We talked about the internet as a research tool and how to find answers with it. We found a great Wikipedia page that had black and white photos of people ice cutting with horses. The children were ecstatic to see that they were pulling the blocks with horse and cart just like in the movie, and decided Frozen must have happened a long time ago because they did not have cars.
"Cutting Ice on the river" by John Boyd, Toronto, 1890
They were surprised to discover that while ice blocks are used for ice sculpting, ice was in high demand for refrigeration prior to the invention of electric refrigerators. Many found it hard to believe that there WAS a time without the fridges that we take for granted. It was a great opportunity to discuss how much harder it was to preserve foods in years past and how important a fridge is to today's families. This led in nicely to my colleague's PBL as her class was raising money to buy a fridge for a family in need. I let them know we had been invited to participate in helping a family in need, and the details of that amazing experience and collaboration can be found under 'St Gerard's Lego Festival'. *Still under construction!
The next clue that caught the children's interest, was the Northern Lights display in the film. A few of the children had seen them in person, and were eager to point out that they happen in the North, ( a vague concept still) and that Elsa climbs the 'North Mountain' in the movie. I asked them where the North was and they shook their heads at me with that 'You are so silly' expression, and replied 'Where Santa lives of course, the North Pole". I love the minds of children!
Next, we investigated the real cause of the Northern Lights with a great video explaining how solar storms get caught in the Earths poles.
To help make the concepts explained in the video more concrete, we did an experiment with magnets and iron filings. The magnets were taped to a ball to represent the earth and it's two poles. The filings were the magnetized particles (dust) from the solar storm. When the dust was blown past a ball with no magnets it just blew past. When it was blown past the earth, the filings clustered onto the magnetic poles. We talked about how the dust from the sun and the stuff the poles was made of combined to light up, like glow sticks that don't glow until you snap them to mix the components inside. The concept was pretty complex but they loved exploring the magnetism of the iron filings, and going home to quiz their parents on what causes the Northern Lights.
We discussed maps and how they are different from globes. We made a map of the world and marked the countries that would be close enough to the poles to see the Northern Lights. The children were excited to have narrowed down our search.
The children were still very fascinated with the concept, so I posed the question "How can we make the Northern Lights happen in our classroom?" The children were so excited and came up with amazing ideas for this experiment. They proposed:
We tried each idea as a group and then let the children explore their favourites as centres. The projector was a favourite. The children loved testing what objects the light would pass through, and we made a bag of water with food colouring to see how much colour it would take to block the light. Later we put up paper and they drew the outlines of various objects and coloured patterns to look like the Northern Lights.
The children were still very fascinated with the concept, so I posed the question "How can we make the Northern Lights happen in our classroom?" The children were so excited and came up with amazing ideas for this experiment. They proposed:
- Dancing with glow sticks.
- Shining flash lights through coloured glass and tissue paper.
- Waving blue and green Christmas lights to different music.
- Shining a bright light (I supplied a projector here) on a waving blanket and flashing colors on it.
- Blowing tissue paper and coloured cloth with fans.
- Shining lights through our liquid squishable fidgets.
We tried each idea as a group and then let the children explore their favourites as centres. The projector was a favourite. The children loved testing what objects the light would pass through, and we made a bag of water with food colouring to see how much colour it would take to block the light. Later we put up paper and they drew the outlines of various objects and coloured patterns to look like the Northern Lights.
Next, the children made beautiful art work by blending chalk pastels using a wavy stencil and pompoms. The forefront of the picture involved drawing a horizon line with silhouettes of animals and trees cut out of black construction paper. This opened a discussion of what animals should be in their picture as one child wanted to draw a giraffe and another said that giraffes don't live where there is snow. I used this discussion as a lead in to our next exploration- northern animals.
Northern Animals: a look at habitat.
We discussed what animals would live in snowy areas. The list included animals they were familiar with in Alberta: bear, deer, elk, caribou, wolves. They also thought polar bears and penguins love the cold. We sorted the plastic animals in our play tub in categories of cold climate and warm climate, noting that giraffes and gorillas wouldn't live in the snow. Some of the children were excited to share what they knew of animals that fly south, and hibernate during the cold months. We discussed what animals we saw in the movie, and the children were excited that Sven is a reindeer, because maybe it does take place at the North pole near Santa. We turned our sand table into a winter landscape with snow, ice, trees, and water (styrofoam, clear glass stones, glitter flakes, and a pan of water). They built in a cave, and we included our winter climate animals. They loved exploring in the water with penguins and whales. I added in plastic characters from the movie and foam balls for them to build snowmen. This coincided nicely with our exploration of winter, experiments with melting snowmen, and outdoor excursion to build real snowmen in the playground.
Our discussion of movie characters and animals led us to talking about the horses in 'Frozen'. The children began discussing whether the prince's horse in Frozen was the same as any of the other Disney horses (one of the girls was sure the 'Tangled' horse was the same, just a different colour because their faces looked the same compared to the big Draft horse in Brave). I took this lead-in to explore different breeds of horses, explaining that each breed originates from a particular place in the world and has unique characteristics. We compared this to our explorations of our own cultural heritage, (which they have been studying with Miss Bouree in Social Studies). Just like our grandparents and great grandparents came from different parts of the world, different breeds of horses can be traced to different parts of the world. The children thought that finding out the breed of Hans' horse, (which looked like all the other horses in the Frozen movie) could lead us to the country where it was set.
We typed 'Breeds of Horses' in google and discussed Wikidedia being an online version of an encyclopedia, (and then discussed encyclopedias as they had no previous knowledge of the concept). We pulled up Hans horse and discussed what markings made him unique: A black stripe on his tale and a black strip running down the centre of his mane surrounded by white, the cropped cut of his mane, tan coloured body and dark nose and legs. We then scrolled through different breeds until we found the Fjord horse. The children were so excited to see the patterned manes on real horses just like in the movie. We found out that the breed originated in Norway but then had to check to see if this country fit with all of the other clues we had explored so far.
We researched Norway to prove our case. We researched traditional Norwegian clothes, buildings, landscapes, animals (especially reindeer and Fjord horses), climate, and checked that it fell in our path of countries that can view the Northern Lights. We put our pictures up beside the movie images to compare them. Then for fun we taped our names on the appropriate countries to map out our own cultural heritages.
The children have been proud to show parents and friends from other grades where 'Frozen' took place and how they know. We discussed why Elsa was alienated from her community and how being 'different' can scare people. I loved the message in the movie that what makes us different can be our greatest gifts as well, and the lesson that we need to be open minded and loving of all people. We discussed who might feel scared or different in our own community, and the children jumped to our newest student to the classroom. We brainstormed ways to make new students feel welcome, and celebrated for all that makes them unique. The children decided they could invite them to play, offer to sit with them, share their toys, find out about what they like, and give them a hug if they were sad and missing their old home.
There is so much love in their young hearts! They have made me so very proud in their eagerness to learn, explore, and love.
There is so much love in their young hearts! They have made me so very proud in their eagerness to learn, explore, and love.