“Are Princesses Really Real?”

It all started with the question:

L.D.- “Are princesses really real Miss Franklin?”

From the first day of school the children in our class have been sining the Frozen theme song, building castles and dressing up like kings and queens. One afternoon in early October one of our students asked if princesses were real. After some discussion we figured out that their are both real and pretend princesses.

Miss. Franklin – “Yes, princesses are real.”

L.D.- “See, I told you they were real, I saw them in Disney world!”

A.M. – “But they are just people dressed up”

Miss. Franklin – “That’s true, their are real princesses and their are ones that are dressed up like princesses from stories. The real princesses are ones that live in countries where they have Royal families.”

L.D. “Like where?”

This prompted us to take out the iPads and do some research.

We found pictures of real castles and princesses as well as Disney Castles and princesses. We printed out photos and compared them, Real / Pretend .  This lead to an ongoing inquiry into Casles.

Its amazing to me where the topic of Castles has taken us over the past few months. Here is some documentation of our journey leading up to our trip to a REAL castle.

           

At the beginning of our inquiry the students were building the Frozen Castle out of everything and anything they could find in our classroom. They used construction materials to build the castle, they painted castles with water colours, and drew pictures of every Disney princess they knew. Ms. Smidt and I knew that we had to follow their interest in castles and see where it would lead us.

We read some fairy tales and compared them. The children realized that a lot of the stories began with Once Upon a Time and finished with The End. Although we read many varieties of Fairy Tales, from Cinderella to The Three Little Pigs, the children remained most interested in the ones with Castles and princesses.

We learned about different types of music and the way that people would dance at royal balls. We watched a Christmas performance by Andre Reiu, which was filmed in his castle in Switzerland. The children were so inspired by the beautiful music and way of dancing that they tried to waltz together. They dressed up like different people found in a Castle and danced to instrumental music.

Our trip finally arrived and we got to visit a Real Castle…

Casa Loma

We walked trough tunnels and pretended that we were the people that worked for Sir Henry Pallet and Lady Pallet. We climbed winding stair cases to the highest point of the castle and looked out over the city of Toronto. They children were so excited to climb up to the top and run through all of little halls.

We wondered what it would be like to dress like them…

To sleep in their lavish bedrooms

 

And to have friends over for tea and cookies

We wondered if the tiger was real or fake.

 

We watched a ballet performance of the Snow Queen and were all amazed by the wonderful dancers. When we arrived back at school some of us demonstrated our dance moves for the class.

A week later the children were still talking about their trip to Casa Loma and began role playing at our imagination table. They set up little scenes and acted out stories that they imagined. To our surprise we arrived at school one day to find a gift from our classroom “kindness elf.”

       

A Castle for us to paint and play with at our imagination table.

 

 

 

  

 

 

We look forward to seeing where this inquiry will take us next.

 

Colour Mixing

 

Often as educators we set out provocations in hopes that the students will use it in a certain way. It aways amazes me that so often as you let play unfold with out interruption from an adult it can take a completely different direction that is equally important and meaningful to the children at that particular time.

At the water table we set out some jugs and measuring cups for them to explore with. With this provocation, we had intended for the students do some measuring and predicting but as we listened to their discussions, we discovered that they activity had taken a totally different direction.

Z.R. “Hey look, the water turned green!”

L.C. “because you put it in the yellow one. Blue and Yellow make green.”

Z.R. “It’s back to blue when it’s in a white container.”

As I continued to listen to their conversations I realized that this group of students knew a great deal about colour mixing. I read the book “Mouse Paint” to see if we could spark  discussion about colours and engage other children in a conversation about colour mixing.

Later that week we set out a painting activity hoping that the students would do some patterning. To my surprise it turned into another colour mixing experiment.

Here, one of the girls drags her finger across the foil to mix the different colours together. She really wanted to make purple and figured out that she could do that by mixing red and blue.

My partner and I then decided to read the book “Mix It Up” to take their interest a little further and talk about shades.

                         

Using the primary colours, the children mixed the paint to create their own shades. Once they found a colour they liked they used a Q-tip to fill in a circle on the sheet. The children created many colours and shades and then named them when they were done. As you can imagine they came up with some pretty funny names for their colours!

Our next experiment with colour will be dying our own wooden cubes using liquid water colour. Our hope is to create a rainbow of coloured cubes to explore with in the Hands on Learning area.

How have you experimented with colour in your home or classroom?