Capturing the weather
28th March - 1st April
Lately I have noticed a small group of children have been interested in the weather and looking up at the sky constantly.
While I was outside with the camera a child wanted me to take photos of him up on a big blue box, while he was standing up there he looked up at the sky and said “it’s going to rain today, I heard it on the radio”.
28th March - 1st April
Lately I have noticed a small group of children have been interested in the weather and looking up at the sky constantly.
While I was outside with the camera a child wanted me to take photos of him up on a big blue box, while he was standing up there he looked up at the sky and said “it’s going to rain today, I heard it on the radio”.
Later that morning we went out and a few children pointed and talked about how dark the clouds looked.
A few children had turns of taking photos of the dark clouds.
Te Whariki highlights that “children develop the ability to represent their discoveries using creative and expressive media and the technology associated with them” (Ministry of Education, 1996. p. 88).
When we went inside the small group of children that were interested in knowing more about the weather went with me to go to the printer to pick up there pictures they took of the clouds.
At mat time, we all talked about the different types of weather we have, and how we can find out about the weather; some children pointed to our classroom weather chart on the wall and a few children shouted out listening to the radio and the news on TV, and another child said “on the internet on the laptop”.
Smorti (1999) states that "technology is a creative and purposeful activity aimed at meeting the needs of opportunities through the development of products systems and environments (p.5)".
From our group discussion at mat time, one child came up to me later that day and asked if we could “look at the weather on the lap top” “sure we can use the laptop to go on the internet to see what’s happening with the weather”
A small group of children gathered around and we went on a website: http://nz.weather.yahoo.com/ to look at the weather and what is happening. We talked about what the little pictures meant – such as its going to be sunny and cloudy and it might rain. We then talked about the New Zealand map and where Auckland is on the map, and this later brought us to go to our New Zealand
Later that week, I had a parent coming to me asking if we are learning about the weather as her child had wanted to watch the news on TV about the weather.
And I had another parent come in and say that his son wanted to show him that you can see if its going to rain on his laptop. It was good to see that children are extending on their learning from the centre to home, with using different technology to find out what they are interested in.
I believe that when children observe different experiences such as when it’s raining children are asking questions, making theories, reflecting on their findings about what is happening. And as Smorti highlights, I too am “a learner, my ideas about technology are still developing, and I expect they will change as I continue to research and reflect on what is happening for educators and children as we explore technology in the early childhood curriculum” (1999, p. 9).
Reference List
Ministry of Education. (1996). Te Whariki: He wariki matauranga mo nga mokopuna o Aotearoa/ Early childhood curriculum. Smorti, S. (1999). Technology in Early Childhood. Early Education, No.19 Autumn 1999, 5-10.
Kia Ora Lisa! It was great to read your strategies to extend the children’s interest in clouds. This enabled them to ‘learn’ to take photographs while providing you with the opportunity to continue their inquisitiveness during mat time.
ReplyDeleteI benefitted from reading about the different ways your children’s interest in ICT continued, for example with the radio, laptop and television and it was great that it continued throughout the week.
It was wonderful to read that a parent approached you and questioned if the centre had an interest in weather because of the child watching the weather broadcast. You have built a link between their home and the centre seamlessly. I also think it was very clever to include the link to a weather site on your blog!
Perhaps you can continue their interest, and the children could bring in weather forecasts from the daily newspaper, laminate them and display them within the centre. Within my own centre, we videoed the children 'pretending' to read the weather, similar to a news broadcast, and a lot of fun!
Tumeke Lisa!
Kia ora Lisa,
ReplyDeleteI have just finished reading your blog, and it is evident that you have truly taken the opportunity to foster and extend on the children’s use of ICT, through a variety ways. You have taken the opportunity as it arose through you own observations of the children. It has shown the role you have taken and also the approach you have used. I like the variety of discussions that were had through the interest and also the various uses of technology that came about as the children’s interest followed through. Your learning experience that took place was like a project over a period of time as this was evident when parents acknowledged their children’s own learning. This provided clear partnerships with parents when they then acknowledged the children making links from centre to home, such as the child who wanted to watch the weather on the news at home. Mitchell (2007) suggests that we need to build relationships with families and consider how we can use technology to make links from home to centre and vice versa.
I can see you that you have developed a confidence as you went about the uses of technology and the variety technological methods involved such as radio, computer/internet and TV. I liked how you used a variety of techniques to extend the children’s understanding of the weather, for example scaffolding the learning such as mat time discussions and technology that can be used. There was such a range of learning outcomes for the children such as maps, images and websites. Plus the literature used in this blog was informative and related to your post.
Thank you and tumeke Lisa, for your insightful discussion, and also giving me the opportunity to see your practice in action, and also on how you have extended and incorporated technology into the curriculum in your centre. Perhaps you could further extend on the weather interest by making a weather chart with the children letting them take the pictures and printing the pictures etc to document what the weather is doing each day.