Kindness Takes Flight

This experience also connects to graciousness. When Aarohi notices and appreciates living things around her, she is developing care and respect for the world we share with others by trying to spread the birds food in our garden. We can encourage ourselves to think about how we can gently observe birds, give them space, and care for the natural environment.

As young learners, we find that trying to draw the bird helps us understand it better. By observing its shape, feathers, beak, and movements, we begin to notice details we may not have seen before. Drawing the bird makes learning more enjoyable and helps us connect what we see with what we are learning.

Our drawings of the blue jay provide a meaningful connection to Mel Fell. Blue jays are birds that we frequently encounter in our surroundings, giving us an opportunity to slow down, observe, and become curious about the natural world.

In Mel Fell, Mel is a bird who takes a brave leap and discovers what she is capable of. As we look closely at our own blue jay encounters, we can make connections between the bird in the story and the birds we see in our everyday lives. Our drawings allow us to share what we notice of the blue jay's colours, shape, movement, and where it likes to visit.

To extend our learning through movement, we connect the story with the song "Flap Your Wings Together." As we listen to the music, we explore different ways of moving like birds. We practice hopping, jumping, and leaping, connecting our physical movements to Mel's journey through the air. We experiment with balancing on one foot while hopping, pushing off and landing with both feet when jumping, and moving from one foot to the other when leaping. Fia, Leanna, and Aarohi begin hopping, while Rebecca, Luka, Anthony, and Emily practice jumping with both feet together. We also experiment with leaping from one point to the other as we move forward. 

As the learning experience continues, we demonstrate growing confidence in our gross-motor abilities. Hopping requires us to maintain balance on one foot, while jumping helps us practice using both legs to push off and land safely. Leaping encourages us to shift out weight from one foot to the other while moving through space. We also develop body awareness, coordination, balance, and spatial awareness as we adjust our movements to avoid bumping into others.

The song creates a playful and meaningful opportunity for us to explore movement. Through repetition and music, we are able to practice these locomotor skills while expressing ourselves and participating with others. This learning experience supports our physical abilities as well as our ability to listen, follow cues, coordinate movements, and engage cooperatively in a group.

Through this learning experience, we are developing our gross-motor skills, balance, coordination, body awareness, and spatial awareness. We also begin to notice that different movements require different ways of using our bodies. The combination of storytelling and music creates an opportunity for us to make connections between what we hear, what we see, and how we move.

The high five also transforms the movement into a shared social experience. This supports not only our gross-motor abilities, balance, coordination, and spatial awareness, but also our confidence, communication, and sense of belonging.

A group of us become fascinated with jumping. We begin jumping from one spot to another, comparing who can jump the farthest and experimenting with different ways of taking off.

The educator notices this interest and introduces floor markers. We begin measuring our jumps. We predict where we will land before jumping and then check our predictions.

Soon, we are creating our own challenges: Can I reach the next box? Can I jump farther? How many jumps will it take to get across?

Through play, we are developing an emerging mathematical language for distance, position, quantity, comparison, sequence, and spatial relationships. The mathematics has been discovered through the jumping.​

Our collection of feathers gathered during our community walks offers another meaningful connection to Mel Fell. As we walk through our neighbourhood, we have become attentive to the birds that share our community with us. Finding feathers encourages us to slow down, look closely. and wonder about where they come from and which birds may have left them behind.

In Mel Fell, Mel's journey invites us to think about birds, movement, and the world from a bird's perspective. Our feather collection extends this curiosity beyond the story and into our own surroundings. We can compare the feathers we find, notice differences in size, colour, and texture, and wonder about the birds they may belong to.

The following day, we return with our curiosity still centres on movement. After exploring jumping and leaping, we begin to wonder about how other animals move through their environments.

A bird becomes the focus of our conversation.
"Why do birds have feathers?"
This simple question opens up many possibilities. We share our theories. The question becomes more than a question about birds. It becomes an invitation to observe, predict, test ideas, compare, and develop theories.

We wonder why birds have feathers covering their bodies. When asked why we think birds have feathers, she smiles and says, "I think feathers are to keep them warm."

When it comes to her turn, Rebecca confidently shares her idea: "I think feathers are to lay eggs and babies." Her response shows her developing understanding as she makes connections between feathers, eggs, and baby birds.

Anthony enthusiastically joins the bird exploration by jumping and flapping his arms like a bird. He moves with excitement, using body to imitate how birds may move and fly. Through this playful experience, Anthony shows curiosity and interest in exploring how wings and feathers.

As sharing the experience of collecting feathers, we wonder what feathers can do. Emily says "Feathers keep birds cozy and more flying." We go ahead with this learning journey by thinking about how things fly. Emily and Anthony agree that feathers are part of the wings. To explore our wonder, we are introduced a book called Wonder Wings by Rebecca E. Hirsch.  We see honeybees have wings and Emily comments that wings are also helping to pollinate not only flying. 

Rebecca is sharing her thought about flying. She shows us that leaves can fly. We watch a leaf is tossed in the air from her hand and falling on the ground. And we wonder why it's not flying. Anthony stands up and shares his thought saying, "Maybe some wind!" One friend gives us a chance to wonder deeper, and another friend gives us a key to open the next door of our journey.

As following with Anthony's thought about this inquiry, we use a fan to see how wind affects things to fly. First, we collect some leaves and some petals from outside and we try to see what will happen when we let them be close to the wind. As we watch how the leaves go up fast with the wind, our enthusiasm of the inquiry is growing at the moment. We try to capture them flying in the air. They are moving rapidly and irregularly but surely we see they are flying.

Then, we decide to go further with this wind experiment with different materials such as pompons. We put the pompons in the tube and realize that they are not moving with the wind. Here comes the another wonder from us. "Why are they not flying like leaves and petals?" Emily says, "It's because of the weight." adding pompons are heavier than the leaves. She shows her understanding of cause and effect by saying the weight affects to the movement of the pompon with wind.

Kindest,
Children & Friends.