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The Nature of Sligo- Week 6 | The Nature of Sligo: Kids Own Publishing
2009-01-16
The Nature of Sligo- Week 6
Week 6.
The first activity that was developed in class was the Indoor Nature Study Experiment (INSE).
This involved cutting two inches off the top of a number of root vegetables:carrots, parsnips, sweet potatoes, turnips and celeraic.
The vegetables were suspended in jars using cocktail sticks which sat on the rim of each glass. Water was poured into the glass which just covered the bottom of the vegetable. In addition I included cuttings from the money-plant and again these were placed into jars of water. (next week we will plant wildflower seeds).
The aim of this project is to develop the children`s observational and drawing skills, monitoring the growth and change of these small-scale experiments in the class room.
In their note-books they were asked to illustrate and write up this experiment and later we carried out a number of drawings.
A particular approach that seems successful but challenging for the children is to draw these objects without gazing at the paper they are drawing on, but to really concentrate on looking.
In the afternoon we walked but this time asking the children to really concentrate on what was all around them - the wonderful delights of this landscape and hidden habitats and structures.
They picked up an `object` each and/or took a photograph of what they saw: to the delight of Tomas he spotted a fox close by.
Back at class using a number of nature study books we made an effort to identify what they had brought back, which in a most cases was successful.
Again this object was illustrated and put into their notebooks.
The last part of the day was spent on the wonders of the `life of a butterfly` presenting a slide show and opening up a discussion all all aspects of this insect. They illustrated the life-cycle of the butterfly in their note-books.
I have devised a number of activities that will be developed over the next few weeks (pattern, symmetry, bilateral, form/shape, 3-d) in relation to the butterfly.
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