Perky Preschool

Communication is important to develop understanding. As we begin with the Finding out stage of our inquiry, the preschoolers gathered together to sort the different animal pictures. They were encouraged to talk about their sorting and explained how they decided to sort and why.  As these little inquirers are still expanding on their English vocabulary, they were supported with a variety of prompts. Together with the developing language skills, they are also still developing a deeper sense of thinking skills to build foundations for later problem-solving skills.  Asking a lot of open and leading questions as prompts helped support the inquiry.  At the end of the activity, the preschoolers came up with 6 animal groups: mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, insects and fish Together with their group they used and schemed our class unit books.  They looked at resources to find information about the animal group they chose. They supported one another to understand the inf...

After several weeks of Tuning In and Finding Out, the preschoolers are now getting ready to apply their thinking, research, and communication skills.  They will spend the remaining weeks digging deeper and becoming experts to a specific animal. They chose the animal that they would like to learn more about.  They worked on their research, and found out important information about the animal. As researchers, they used different tools to gather information.  They looked at books, watched educational videos and interviewed people.  These information were then documented on to their research paper.  They understood that there are things that they know (or think they already know) but they should be able to prove these ideas.  They need evidence to back up their ideas.  Alongside their RESEARCH, they are SORTING OUT information and developing a plan on how to COMMUNICATE their understanding to the audience for the Animal Exhibit. They started making th...

  PICTURE WALK "We don't have to be readers, YET, to know and understand what's in the book. For now, we can use pictures and what we already know to get information." - Perky Preschool - As a starting point in the Perky Preschool's journey to becoming RESEARCHERS, they used unit books to help them learn about different roles and responsibilities of people in the community.  They did an activity called the Picture Walk.  Picture walks help the preschoolers connect the visual images in the book to their own experiences and activate prior knowledge. This sets the purposed for reading and they are able guess and get information about the topic and about what might be happening in the book. As they look, they make connections, set the purpose and comprehension is increased.  During this activity, the preschoolers talked about what, who, where, when, and why questions related to the pictures.    They talked. And yes, they do talk a lot!    And they lea...