Hayati Homeschool: December 2016

We've had some awesome learning adventures since school began in September. After the long hot Summer we were keen to get back into the rhythm of school days and enjoy the cooler weather - though there were several weeks of swimming weather at the beginning of the year. Now with our new children's pool, the kids could take full advantage of splashing about to cool off, we even had a tea party in the pool!

One of our topics at the beginning of the year was Morocco - so we learned more about the amazing place the children come from by making Moroccan food, learning about Moroccan clothes and landscapes, listening to gnaoua music and having a henna party.

Learning about Morocco through poster making

Learning about the clothes people wear for Moroccan celebrations: caftans and jabadours

Making sheep with cotton buds to celebrate the Eid Al Adha holiday

The children made Kaab Al Ghazal - Gazelle Horns - to learn about Moroccan cuisine

And couscous which was very hands on!

It turned out beautifully and then it was steamed and prepared for lunch

I have been doing more research into Reggio Emilia inspired teaching approaches. It has been an incredible journey for me and led to more exciting and fulfilling projects at school for the children. I will write a post later about my thoughts and experiences using Reggio approaches and add more to our philosophy section expanding on how we are adapting Reggio approaches to Hayati Homeschool. Something I have added to the school is a discovery table where I place an array of loose parts (from pine cones to ribbons to feathers to beads and much more) to be experimented with, manipulated and transformed in whatever way the children choose. I have been photographing their creations and observing how they choose to interact with the items on the table. What learning adventures they have!

A nature inspired table with autumn leaves, feathers, stones and a snake skin we found on a nature discovery walk

Using the mirror helps children appreciate objects from different angles and perspectives. It can help them focus on particular details or allow them to see an object in a different way.

Perhaps because we had been discussing wind power and experimenting with different wind experiments, one of the children collected feathers to put on the mirror and as they began drifting off in the breeze she placed a heavy stone on top of them. She watched the feathers for a while and then content that her addition had solved the problem, she moved on to interact with other items on the table.

Our youngest student interacts with the discovery table. She is closely observing the beads and experimenting with the tweezers.

A sound table - the children experiment with hitting metal spoons on glasses filled with different amounts of water. They enjoy the different range of sound and begin experimenting with rhythm. They also use the shell and bamboo wind chimes to investigate the different kinds of sounds different materials make.

Another nature inspired table - with four different kinds of leaves of differing shape, colour, size and texture on reflective paper plates. Along with feathers and two kinds of magnifying glass.

Strips of different kinds of paper, craft sticks, sellotape, scissors, pens and pencils were arranged over the discovery table - the children immediately begin making designs on the paper and the craft sticks: 'I'm making a present for my mummy.' 'I'm making a present for you.' 'I'm making a cake.' 'I'm making a surprise.'

One of the children experiments with folding strips of paper in different ways and then chopping it up with scissors and carefully observing the end result.

One of the older children decided to sort the multicoloured beads and bells into groups using the egg carton box. "Now we can use them to play shop", she explained.

One of the younger children decides to use the colour blocks to see how many beads and bells she can fit into its small window.

Our Reggio inspired Maths blanket - here the children can sit comfortably and relax while exploring the sensory number figures (they are made out of sandpaper) and explore buttons, pasta shapes and dotted craft sticks.

The children enjoy closing their eyes and feeling a number with the hands, tracing its shape with they fingers as they try to analyse what number it is. When they have identified the number they count out beads or pasta shapes to show the number's value in the basket. They sometimes do this with the craft sticks too - finding the craft stick with the matching number of dots.

An engineering activity table - the children experimented with stacking, balance and pattern making. Initially some of the children found this challenging as they couldn't replicate the idea they had in their heads with the cups and the craft sticks on the table. With time, some discussion and demonstration their understanding of the materials grew and they began to build their designs with more confidence.

Away from the discovery table the children also demonstrate their creative design skills - here one of the children has made "a cake" on the swing seat using the sand below it and some olives and leaves she found in the garden. I photograph their creations and then later I ask the children to reflect on the photos and then note what they say and paste it in their workbooks.

Getting messy is often important in the pursuit of learning! Here we have a discovery table with sand, water, funnels, cups and pipettes.

One of the children experiments with pouring water into a funnel and watching it flow into her cup of sand.

She discovers that the water now mixed with her cup of sand doesn't flow through the funnel as before. She experiments with adding more water and observes how this mixture behaves.

A tree with different coloured ribbon of varying lengths - the children enjoyed the sensation of walking through the ribbons, pulling on them, wrapping them round the hands and legs, tying the ribbons together and watching the ribbons sway in the breeze. Some of the children experimented by tying leaves, rocks, olives and feathers to the ribbons and observing how this changed the ribbons movement.

On a cold Autumn morning we set up a den inside the tent offering the children an array of blankets, cushions, squares of fabric and pegs.

They built their dens and began a role playing game with animals deciding which animals had been 'good' and so were allowed to come in and which animals had 'not been nice' and so had to stay outside.

One of the children decides to use the mirror to create her rainbow of beads. She carefully sorted through the little beads and created lines of colour to symbolise a rainbow. This self-directed creativity allows her to feel confident in her abilities, to express her ideas and to make new observations. "Look at the rainbow, it's like it's sitting on the tree."

A nature discovery table with leaves, sticks and stones and some brown and green pipe cleaners. The children used the frame to create pictures using the objects. Here one of the children has created Stick Man in the Winter - the yellow leaves show his hair has changed from green to yellow and the white stones represent snow.

Another child made Stick Man in the Summer - the green pipe cleaners represent the grass and the white stones the clouds in the sky.

One of the younger children began experimenting with the box of foam shapes. Soon the older ones were crowding round with sounds of 'wow' and 'that's amazing'. I came over and the older children explained that he had made 'the tower from Kung Fu Panda' - indeed it looked just like the Chinese pagoda in the film. The younger child felt enormous pride at his creation and enjoyed how impressed the older children were with what he had accomplished. It was a wonderful moment to witness as he had carefully selected which shapes to use and replicated the pattern in order to create the image he had in his head representing the pagoda both in colour and shape.

We have also done many art projects this year connected with our different learning topics - since Marrakech was hosting the COP22 this year we thought it would be a great opportunity to learn about the environment, pollution, recycling and renewable energy, like wind power. First we got the children to focus on the beauty of the nature around them: to appreciate the colours, textures, shapes and smells they experience around them.

The children walked around the school garden collecting petals, leaves and feathers to create a nature window. Here the children are organising their collection onto sticky contact paper.

We identified each leaf and flower - fig, rose, lavender, sage, olive, bougainvillea - and then discussed the shape and texture

Another sheet of contact paper was then pressed on top to seal the nature design

Finished and framed

Over time the children watched how the leaves and flowers changed colour - turning yellow and translucent as they began to die and decompose. This was an important observation so the children could appreciate that plants and flowers are living things that require water and food just like us. Then we talked about protecting and looking after living things as important to how we live and behave in the world if we want the place where we live to stay clean, beautiful and healthy.

To explore water pollution we made a sensory sea bucket. We filled it with water, rocks, shells and some plants and then added sea creatures. The children played with these for a while and we talked about how nice this ocean home was. It was clean, had food for the animals and they had friends 😊

I had been saving some of our plastic rubbish and threw it around the school garden. We discussed how this looked and we talked about what the school garden would look like if we did this everyday and never cleaned it up. We then got cleaning up making sure to pick up 'all the pollution.'

We put some of the plastic items in the sea bucket and talked about how a lot of rubbish ends up in the ocean. We talked about how the plastic does not decompose like the plants did in the picture we made but stays around for a long time. The children then used the tweezers to pick out all the rubbish and make the home for the ocean creatures clean and healthy again. Afterwards when the sea bucket was clean and had returned to normal I talked to them about how some water pollution is liquid like oil. We poured some olive oil into the water and I asked the children if they could clean the water again. They tried to scoop the oil up with their hands but without success. I asked them to pick up one of the animals and describe how it felt -'it's all oily'. We discussed how oil spills affect birds and fish in the sea and how difficult it is to clean up. I then poured some purple food colouring into the water and said that this was a poisonous chemical, very bad for the health of the fish and the plants. Could we take the chemical out of the water? What would happen to the animals that lived in this water? Would they want to eat the fish that lived in this water?

Later that day we set about making a poster about keep the oceans clean. Here the children used shaving foam paint to represent the clean water of the ocean.

An educational poster to create awareness about water pollution. We used the Nemo fish character and the children decorated the sea scene with shells and seaweed and then reluctantly added plastic bottles tops, bags and clingfilm to represent pollution. My daughter later removed all of these as she said she 'didn't like looking at her picture will all that rubbish on it.'

We discussed what we thought about plastic, we certainly didn't want any of it going in the ocean or just in a landfill, so what else could we do with it? That's when we introduced the concept of recycling - finding another use for an object so it does not go to waste. I brought down the empty cheese and yoghurt pots I had saved from their lunch the day before. What could we do with these? Let's make art with them!

We made tortoises from pots of fromage frais

And painted water bottles the children brought in from home with acrylic paint and permanent markers

And turned them into the most beautiful wind catchers - the spirals jump and bounce in the breeze

The tops of the bottles are perfect for threading a stick through and attaching some twine

Penguins made from plastic bottles

A fish wind catcher using a water bottle and plastic bag

We also made wind catchers from found objects like shells, rocks, olives, feathers, pasta and beads. We observed the wind catchers and noted how the heavier threads moved the least in the wind. We discussed why this was and what materials made the threads heavier.

This set us up to begin experimenting with wind power. We made balloon rockets and set up strings all around the school garden to have balloon rocket races and experiment with balloons going up and down the strings at different gradients. This was a lot of fun 😊

One of the children prepares to let a balloon rocket go

Later we blew up all the balloons and filled the school tent with them so the children could dance and play with them. But the children came up with a plan to experiment with wind power all on their own. They asked me if they could turn the fan on and then ran around collecting balloons and bringing them close to the fan and then letting them go. They squealed in delight as the balloons flew across the tent and then ran to catch the balloons and repeat this fun experiment.

Catching balloons for the fan

Some of our other art projects have included:

Free painting in the wind

The children painted both sides of their paper while accounting for its movement in the breeze

Raindrop wind and sun catchers made from melted wax crayons on baking paper

Paper pinwheels decorated with watercolour paints

Feathers dipped in glitter

Bear in the snow - the children painted a teddy bear and then pressed him down on to black card to create this. Then using cotton buds dipped in paint they created a snowstorm around him.

No bears were harmed in the making of this artwork! He was washed and was as good as brand new afterwards 😊

Festive decorations made from sticks found in the garden. The children had to identify the longest stick and the shortest stick and then organise the rest of the sticks from longest to shortest to build their Christmas Tree ornament.

Here a few pictures of some of the other activities we get up to:

Throwing game

Older and younger children paint together

Making play dough cakes

Bug viewing

Face painting

Dressing up and dance

Gymnastics

Materials for drawing and writing are always available. These past few months the older children have been drawing portraits of their families regularly.