This year, we were fortunate to experience the Imagination Playground. This is a changing exhibit and leaves the CDM on November 11. The area consists of big blue blocks that form an innovative playground equipment system. While children play with the blocks it encourages learning, social development, movement. Students cooperatively formed houses, furniture, mountains, and play equipment using the big blue blocks. The blocks were designed by by David Rockwell, an award-winning architect and Mrs. Rockwell’s brother-in-law. They are a great way for children to learn through open-ended, deep, joyful play. Click on the image to learn more about the program.
In addition, students explored the Mammoth Discovery exhibit where they could dig for fossils and examine them. They visited the Rainbow Market where they learned about healthy foods and making good food choices. In the Secrets of Circles area students were able to see how circles are used in many cultures and discovered that circles help people in moving heavy loads and supporting structures.
Other areas included the Streets section where students could generate power to make a plane fly and trolley move. The Water Ways Exhibit allowed students to discover the effects of water pressure and gravity on the flow of water through interactive play.
Every exhibit provided students with an opportunity to learn by observing, examining, cooperating, exploring, and creating. In addition, it provided an experience for students to write a personal narrative about our field trip. Be sure to ask your child about the different exhibits at the Children’s Discovery Museum and find out which one was his or her favorite.
Foundational skills are part of our common core standards. Both grades are learning to read words with tricky spellings, and to read and write words with inflectional endings. Students are practicing using context and punctuation to understand text structure and meaning. In addition, we are learning the proper use of apostrophes in contractions and quotation marks in dialogue. Also, students are working on remembering to capitalize the pronoun I and the first word in a sentence.
As we read stories and books in class, students are expected to answer questions about the story both orally and in written form. We have been focusing on learning to identify characters, setting, and plot in the stories we read.
In addition, students are learning to use their background knowledge and personal experiences to make connections to text and interpret text. And, by the end of the trimester they should be able to independently write a summary of a story that was read.