Juicing with 7 Year Olds - Action in the Kitchen

Last Friday we had a field trip day to put into action what we have been learning in our inquiry into health. We hiked up one of the surrounding mountains in the morning, I think it's called Fongshen Mountain? We had perfect hiking weather, overcast and cool!

Hiking Field Trip - UOI 2 Health

Hiking Field Trip - UOI 2 Health

We told the students that we would be making healthy juice by juicing fruits and vegetables. We asked them to think of a fruit and a vegetable that they would like to drink the juice from, or a fruit and vegetable that they have NEVER tried the juice from and to bring it to school. We had all sorts of different fruits and vegetables to try! Dragon-fruit, BROCCOLI, guava, bok choy, cabbage, melon, so much variety! 

Juicing with 7 year olds - Action in the kitchen UOI 2 Health

While Ariel and I were preparing the fruit and veggies, we had the students draw a picture of themselves and describe the changes to their body that they noticed while hiking. We talked about strengthening our heart, lungs and muscles while hiking and what happens to our body when we exercise so this activity acted as a quick assessment of their learning and allowed us the time we needed to get everything ready to juice.

What happened to your body while hiking? 

What happened to your body while hiking? 

We made HOT PINK healthy juice!! It was delicious! We combined carrots, dragon-fruit (the pink fruit), guava, cucumbers, and some wax apples. Everybody loved this juice and all my little monkeys were sporting hot pink juice moustaches, so adorable. They loved watching the juice come out of the juicer, the mixing of the colours and touching, smelling, eating the pulp as well.  We made 4 different kinds of mixed fruit and veggie juices and then juiced cucumbers by themselves and juiced broccoli by itself as we had some curious students and RISK-TAKERS that wanted to try just cucumber juice and STRAIGHT BROCCOLI JUICE! It was such a blast and all the students seemed pleasantly surprised at how good the juice was without adding any sugar!

Hot Pink Juice! Juicing with 7 year olds - Action in the kitchen

We had the students record their observations and rate each juice and juice mixes. We got a little carried away with our juicing experiments and didn't end up recording all of our data, but hey, it happens :)

UOI 2 Health - Action in the Kitchen!

After our heathy juice experiments we learned how to make Ants on a Log! I wrote the procedure for "How to Make Ants on a Log" on the whiteboard (yes I managed to review our text type during a field trip day!) and then we passed out the celery, raisins, peanut butter and knives and they went to town making their healthy snacks. They all loved the Ants on a Log snack as well and couldn't believe it was a "healthy" snack! Celery is not a very common vegetable in Taiwan and majority of the students had never eaten it, and none of them had ever eaten celery raw, but they all really liked it. Ariel had never had this snack before either until last year when I introduced it to her, she's also a big fan now of celery and peanut butter! I love sharing new things! I was so busy filling up juice cups and cutting more celery that I forgot to take a picture of our Ants on a Log snack. Luckily my amazing co-teacher Ariel was snapping pictures like crazy so I will be able to snag one from her and post it soon. That's all for now. 

Taking Action & Planting a Garden

Our current Math Investigation is all about MEASUREMENT! We try and integrate our Math Investigations with our current Unit of Inquiry and plan fun engaging investigations in which students can take action and apply their math skills in the real world. 

We posed the questions, "what does a vegetable garden look like and what does it need?" and had students draw a picture of a garden in their inquiry journals. Almost all the students drew pictures of nice straight lines of plants and identified that a garden needs water and sun. As our last Unit of Inquiry was all about how we organize ourselves, students also identified that a garden is organized in rows and some gardens have labels to identify the type of plant. 

We then had students expand their thinking further and asked them to think what Math skills would be needed to plant a garden. Students engaged in a Think Pair Share (think big, pair with a partner and share your thoughts) and then each pair shared with the class and together we made a list of possible Math skills we could use. We will be using lots of different Math throughout this investigation but our main focus is on developing our estimation skills and measuring length and height. 

The students then organized themselves into groups and we discussed what kinds of vegetables we will be growing in our garden and how to plant each vegetable. We are growing cucumbers and squash so that we can measure how long their vines will grow, and we are growing peas, beans, and onions to measure how tall they grow. We then decided to also plant carrots, radishes, and lettuce because we know these vegetables are healthy for us. 

Each group of students were given pink yarn as their measuring tool and together as a team they needed to measure out equal rows in their garden. Once they all agreed on where their rows should be they used a shovel and made a row by estimating how deep the row should be. Students then planted their seeds and estimated how far apart they should be and had to make sure that they had enough seeds to fill their rows. We will see how good their estimating skills were when the seeds start to sprout! We are hoping for nice even rows :) 

Working up the soil in the garden plots.

Working up the soil in the garden plots.

Rows have been measured and seeds planted!

UOI 2: Who We Are - Tuning In Stations

It's already week 2 of our second Unit of Inquiry!!  Our UOI 2 is Health, and before giving the students any information about the UOI we had them explore some tuning in stations to help draw on their prior knowledge and make some connections. Students had 6 minutes in each station, 4 minutes to explore and 2 minutes to write their thoughts on what was in each station. We asked them to think what each topic the station was about and record it in their Learning Journals. 

UOI 2: Health - Tuning In Station - Food

UOI 2: Health - Tuning In Station - External Body Parts

UOI 2: Health - Tuning In Station - Good & Bad Choices

UOI 2: Health - Tuning In Station - Internal Body Parts

UOI 2: Health - Tuning In Station - Exercise 

UOI 2: Health - Tuning In Station - Good & Bad Choices

After the students had explored each station we had them share what they thought each station was about. As a class we then came up with a title for each station and students recorded this title in their Learning Journals using a different colour. We had them use a different colour so we could see their original thoughts on each station to see who was able to make the connections and identify what each station was about. Our last UOI was Organized Community and we practiced our sorting skills lots, so many students thought the topic of each station was sorting or puzzles. After we discussed each station we then asked the students to think what each station had in common and to think what our next UOI could be. It didn't take them long to figure out that our UOI 2 was about health! All station materials except the inner body model and the Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head are from Lakeshore Learning. Our first line of inquiry is about the human body and our concept is Form so the Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head and the human body model station will be out all week for the students to explore.