Down by the river

By group Želve

 

We have been learning where river starts, where is it’s path and where it goes.

We learned what the river offers us.

We can play by the river.

We explored the life in the river. We also use the river for breeding trouts.

We have traditional events, where we “throw the light in the water”. In the evening of the Gregor’s day, we put little wooden houses in the water, with a candle in it, under this bridge.

We searched for several bridges, small and big across the river. We have many bridges.

Water was very important for industry and history. We had blacksmiths, shoe makers, sawmills and other tradespeople who needed water for their work.

Here is where it use to be a watermill.

 

Experimenting with water..

In recent days, we have been doing various experiments with water, so the children get a feeling for the water, a lot of interest has woken up among the children, and find our experiments very exciting.

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Sink or Swim?

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Tornado in a jar .. we used water, dish soap, glitter and jar.

The glitter symbolizes the soil, the water represents the air and the foam of soap is the clouds. When it is swirled in a circular motion, the mini tornado forms!

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coloring the earth! first we explored a real globe, looked at all the country´s like poland,slovenia and spain! then we explored the sea an found out that there is more sea than land on our planet!

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Clouds in a jar! We used a jar, ice cubes, hairspray and boiling water..

Where can we find water inside?

We went on a field trip inside the kindergarten to find out where we can find water inn side.

There is a water in the toilet

There is a water in the dishwasher in the kitchen

Here we can get water to drink

Here we wash our hands

Painting water whit the color blue.

Visit to the fire station

 

The children in Laut (2-3 years old).

We went on a field trip where we found a fire hydrant and we wondered what it was used for and who could use it. Following that trip we went to a visit to the fire station. There we got the answers that everyone can use the fire hydrant, but to do so we need a special key to open it. We also got to know where the water is coming from. It comes from the borehole.

We also saw a fire truck that is always full of water and was also used when the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull took place.

If there is a fire, the emergency line (112) will tell the fire department. There are no longer bells in the firedepartment.

Children:  There is a bell inn the nursery.

Children:  How does the bell turn on in the nursery?

Fireman: The smoke detector turns on the bell if there is a smoke/fire.

 

Little stream, where is your home?

Little stream runs in neighbourhood and we go there often and throw leaves, stones and sticks in admire it. When we started to talk about water we decided that we want to know more about this stream.

First we learnt a song about little stream and it goes like this:

Little stream stop for a while, look around 

and tell me where is your home.

My home is under the mountain,

where birds sing happily.

And why are you so restless,

running from home and birds?

I’ll come back,

when the rain will soak the earth.

We liked a song very much and we decided that we would really like to know where is the home of our little stream. We went for a walk and we were walking by the stream and we were observing very carefully. We were counting bridges, looking for plants and animals… Sometimes we lost it and we have to listen very carefully that we could follow its way. And you know who was with us? Our little drop Pika.

We found the water reservoir and we learnt that from that reservoir we get water through pipes to our homes, preschool that we can wash ourselves, drink it…

Finally we found the home of our little stream.

 

Tinka’s umbrella

Group Turtles with Mojca and Gregor

 

At the beggining of the school year we read a story Angelca Marelca. We learned how the raindrop is travelling from the clouds in the sky, to rivers, sea, plants and back  to the clouds. Through reading and telling the story we have created raindrops, huge and tinny small raindrops, fog and exploring the water and it’s properties and posibilities.

In the game with ice and water we included the use of knives, hammers and saw. We learned how the water looks like in different forms. We used all of our senses, we learned that the water doesn’t have a taste, colour and smell. It can be very cold, or very hot.

We visited the riverside  and we observed, listened, touched and tasted the water from the river.

The time at the river was well spend also for games. The children were throwing rocks in the river and making tall towers.

We found music story, which we learned to perform in front of children’s parents. The song is called Tinkin dežnik (Tinka’s umbrella). It is about a little girl, who wished only for a cute umbrella. But then it didn’t want to rain, so the umbrella teached her this song, which is magic and it calles for rain.

We continue to  explore our river Tržiška Bistrica in this spring.

 

Picture1: exploring the ice

Picture2: making raindrops

Picture 3: at the riverside

Picture 4: music story

Picture 5: the water circle

 

Literacy and water

Children from Owls group learnt about new phenomenons and concepts about water through direct observation, conversation and literature. They made a step forward in literacy.

Next we decided to create our own water cycle. We had so much fun – drawing, colouring, learning about water…

Our Water Cycle

Ana said that the little water drop can travel from Slovenia all around the world, but we didn’t believe her. She read us a story about little boy Peter who had an amazing dream about water drop’s traveling and we were surprised. We wanted to know more!

 Through English song Water Cycle Song on YouTube we learned about continuous movement of water on, above and below the surface of the Earth. We were fascinated! We wanted to have our own water cycle in our classroom! But it wasn’t an easy job. First we were talking a lot about what’s happening with water drop during the movement of water and printed some pictures and watched animation for better notion about it.

Than we literally cut the picture into pieces and were working in groups. Our task was to plan how to create the exactly specified process water takes as it moves around the Earth in the water cycle (Precipitation, Condensation and Evaporation) on the wallboard.

We had some great ideas and we created an amamzing board water cycle in next few days!

We are so proud of it!

We found a river!

We went outside to discover if there are any streams or rivers in the surroundings. We came by a river called Tržiška Bistrica. There we saw an interesting building and were curious, what it was. Ana told us, that this was an old mill – a building equipped with machinery for grinding grain into flour. So interesting!

But unfortunately there was no mill wheel left to see. So we decided to follow the river flow and were hoping to see any on our way.  We had so much fun observing river flowing by the road and throwing stones into it!

We came down to another old mill, but there were also no mill wheels to see. What we found were real old millstones. Ana told us about its function and we couldn’t undertand how come they can now be used like a cute outside tabels and chairs 😊.

We had to stop our resacrh, because it startet to rain, but we still counldn’t imagine, how mill wheel and millstone actually function. That’s why we watched some videos next day and than draw some beautiful mills and put them on the wall.

Field trip and tasting the ocean

 

Early in the morning the children from Kot/Hlíð went on a field trip (4-5 year old), we walked down to the sea, looking at the beach and what it has to offer.

The children had many questions about the sea, for example. Why is the sea so dark? Is there anything in the sea, maybe a whale? Does the water from the tap come from the sea?

So we decided to do a little experiment and taste the sea water and the tap water to see if it tasted the same.

And the results were very obvious that there was a very salty taste of sea water.