In the Year 1 community, the students have been participating in workshops and provocations for our Welcome Inquiry.
One of the workshops involved creating a family tree mobile; they drew their family members and added beads, buttons, and feathers for decoration. This workshop helped the teachers and wider neighbourhood community to understand the students’ place within their life bubbles and appreciate their unique backgrounds and family ties.
We also modelled ourselves in the studio using clay recently. Students were encouraged to create an abstract of themselves using buttons, candles, and feathers to bring their sculptures to life. It allowed the students to showcase their creativity and uniquely express themselves.
Everyone created a beautiful artwork featuring a stunning array of watercolour flowers. The flowers were painted in various colours, ranging from soft pastels to vibrant colours, and arranged to create an aesthetically pleasing composition. The artwork demonstrated the students’ skilful use of watercolours, creating a delicate yet bold piece, with each flower having a unique personality.
As part of the Welcome Inquiry, the children explored different communities and how they functioned. This has led us to focus on exploring our local ecosystem. An ecosystem is a geographic area where plants, animals, weather, and landscape work together to form a life bubble. As a neighbourhood, we will analyse and explore our local ecosystem and that of ourselves. To begin the next phase of our inquiry, the children and the neighbourhood teachers met to discover what we know and wonder about insects and their populations within our school grounds.
To begin the next phase, we asked the children.
What do I know? What do I wonder?
About Insects and Communities
What do I know about insects?
Praying mantis have five eyes – Vivienne.
I know about bugs, I understand that some Mums don’t look after their babies – Raphy
Some spiders, when they have babies, the babies eat their Mums – Ollie
Some spiders eat another spider that’s related to them – Finn
Some spiders attack because they’re scared of us, but we’re afraid of them too – Coco
Grasshoppers can hear with their back legs, and flies taste with their feet – Ellie
Some bugs eat dead bugs – Audrey
Some insects have their babies next to a dead animal, so when they hatch, they have something to eat – Isabel.
Some spiders have eight eyes – Reuben
Insects don’t have backbones – Hazel
When spiders fall in love, the female eats the boy spider – Rhys
Some butterflies eat fruit, and some butterflies eat pollen – Fifi
Snakes eat whatever warm-blooded animal they can find – Ellie
Spiders live in dark spaces – Raphy O
What do I wonder about insects?
I wonder what spiders eat – Minka.
I wonder where spiders usually lay their nests – Agnes
I wonder if insect children go to school – Arlo
I would like to know what possums eat – Veda
I would like to know if baby cats lose teeth – Isabel
I wonder what tigers eat – Raphy O
I wonder what ants eat – June
I would like to know why spiders eat their young – Finn
I wonder what turtles eat – Frankie
I want to know if redbacks eat blood – Coco
I want to know where spiders usually live – Rhys
I would like to know what starfishes eat – Juniper
I would like to know what snakes eat – Estelle
I want to know what goldfish eat. – Spencer