Early Learning Centre

Class 3 Yellow – Unit of Inquiry

In Class 3 Yellow, we have had a marvellous term exploring Living Things through our Unit of Inquiry. Over the course of this term, we have discovered the life cycle of butterflies, frogs, and plants. This has led us on a wonderful journey of discovery as we have discussed what makes a living thing, living. 

We asked our students what makes a ‘living thing’?  Here are some of their responses:

"Air" – Linh

"Grows" – Aiden

"Eats" – Ted

"Moves" - Cerys

Life Cycles

A core part of who we are as 3Y is found in our acknowledgment respect of God’s Creation. We know that God created ALL things, and it’s our responsibility to care for them. Out in the yard, we have expressed a big interest in bugs, creatures and wildlife. We love playing with the large plastic bugs and can often be found searching for an insect or two. 

We began our Inquiry unit by sharing our prior knowledge on Living Things. Through this time of discussion, we discovered we had a large shared interest in frogs. This led us to explore the life cycle, different attributes and facts about frogs.

Our Literacy topic has also provided us with more opportunities to expand our research on Living Things. One of our focus authors, Eric Carle, has written one of our favourite books: The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We wanted to learn about caterpillars and the process of their transformation into butterflies. This seemed fitting with Spring right around the corner…

We were also very lucky to have Mr Gordon visit! He brought some very special visitors with him- Bees! We had lots of fun learning about bees, bee keeping, habits and how they make honey. (We even got to try some honey, it was very delicious!). 

Planting

Ms Rita has taken us on a wonderful gardening adventure! During our morning snack we had started to notice many of our fruits had seeds hidden inside. All these seeds were different shapes, sizes and colours. To extend upon our learning of life cycles, Ms Rita took us on a journey of discovering the life cycle of a plant. 

Over the weeks, we have been exploring seeds and have looked at a variety of seeds- big seeds, little seeds, orange seeds, black seeds, apple seeds, grass seeds, and mandarin seeds! Ms Rita brought in her own special seeds, cress seeds! She informed us that if we plant them and they grow, we can taste the plants they become!

To begin our garden project, we brainstormed what we’d need to do to grow a seed:

• Henry – pot
• Matisse – dirt
• Aiden – water
• Rose – sun

Each day we take care of our little seedlings by watering them. 

We can’t wait to see how big they get!

Minibeasts

Recently, our Inquiry Unit has taken us on an exploration of minibeasts. In our class, we have a small-world sensory table that is filled with preserved minibeasts. We used a magnifying glass to observe the creatures and identify their uniqu traits and attributes.

Our findings included:

• Addison // Spotted Shield Bug – ‘’it’s a… I’m not sure! How many legs? 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8. Yellow and black and a little orange.’’
• Rose // Spotted Red Bug – ‘’It has 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8 legs. Black and orange and little bit red.’’
• Linh // Blue Lead Beetle – ‘’Blue, black and blue. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11 legs. Small one.’’

This is just a little snapshot of the learning taking place in Class 3 Yellow. We hope you enjoyed reading about our recent discoveries!

Miss Newman, Mrs Habib + C3 Yellow Learners