In Search of Silence

As you can imagine, a classroom filled with 20 children does not offer very much silence. In both the morning and afternoon classes, a few of the children were asking their classmates to "stop talking" "just wait for a second" and "listen." I found that they were not requesting this so that their own voices could be heard, but instead they were searching for something else. When I asked them what they were listening to when no one was talking their answers ranged from "peace" to "I'm tired of hearing talk" to "quiet." 

We are currently in the early stages of an inquiry unit on sound, so the absence of sound or silence became a related path for us to follow. Many of the children had ideas about what silence was, such as "Silence is when there is nothing, only you."

This led us on a search to find silence. 

When trying to find silence inside our classroom, we were interrupted by the noises in the classrooms and hallways surrounding us. Wondering if silence were to be found somewhere else in the school, we began our hunt. 

We could not find silence in the school. Instead we heard the sounds of people walking, talking and moving and the school's heating and ventilation systems. We also heard sounds we could not locate and this led us into the unexplored second floor of the school where the big kids are! Here, we were able to see construction and hear its sounds.

Unable to find silence inside of the school, one of the children said, "Maybe silence is outside?" While outside we again closed our eyes and opened our ears. We heard the wind moving, birds tweeting and cars beeping.

Some parts of the school yard had even less silence than others. Near the front of the school we were annoyed, and intrigued, by the amount of sound trucks were making as they backed into the parking lot!

In the end, we were not able to find silence. Despite this, during our search, the children were so focused on listening to the environment around them that they were able to isolate many different sounds that regularly go unnoticed. This has led them now to think about sounds more intently and the ways in which they are created.

Song of the Week: December 10

This week, the children learned about Hanukkah. We had fun learning the popular dreidel song. I have also included a counting song involving latkes, or potato pancakes for you to practise with your child at home.

Song of the Week: December 3

The children were very excited about having a BINGO big book for our shared reading this week. Here is a holiday song that follows the same pattern as BINGO. 

Beautiful Stuff Self-Portraits

After sorting our beautiful found materials, we used them to create self-portraits. 

We laid out all of our materials so they were all visible to everyone. We then chose  the objects we wanted to used to create our own faces.


 Here are some of the beautiful portraits we created with our beautiful stuff:

Song of the Week: November 26

Here is a version of the hokey pokey we are using to help us remember the parts of a tree. Ask your child to show you the actions.