Our 5 and 6 year olds have been going on a learning journey with one of the characters of SM, called Treeous, who is a traveling tree who loves adventures. One day, during one of his vacation days, he travels to a forest here in South India and gets lost while awaiting his friend who promised to meet him there. Children, journeying with Treeous in the forest, went through their imagination of the different kinds of forests they were in, and created them at home.

Owning and personalizing learning goes beyond class hours. From the limited number of hours with their school mates and facilitators, children take their interests, curiosities and exploration to their lives around them, making their learning deep, wide and connected. After all, imagination knows no bounds indeed!
 
Contributed by Sruthy Krishna, Learning Facilitator at Sparkling Mindz Global Preschool.
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It's been a very different year for all of us collectively, this year. But that has not stopped us from exploring, especially during this Independence Day!

Explore what? You may ask.

​Well, we explored our culture, identities, and much more. And we would like to share it with all of you through this video.

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The pre-schoolers (3 to 4 year old) showed a lot of curiosity with regards to flying objects during our discussions on what magic is according to them while reading the book 'Witchety Sticks and The Magic Buttons'. This progressed to them seeing a video of things that fly (which emerged from their discussion on what are some of the magical things they see around and why they are magical) and what they came up with post that is nothing short of magical.
When asked about what they think are flying things, a wide variety of answers came in as responses from the children:

Aa: Aeroplane
S: Butterfly
Aa: Jet
Ab: Eagle
K: Those triangle things that guys take and fly. When there is wind they can fly (kite)
An: Dragonfly and bees
S: Helicopter, aeroplane
H: Parrot
Aa: Jet packs can fly when we wear and we press the button
S: Chicken, hen
F: Can they fly?
S: They have wings
F: So does everything with wings fly?
Collectively: Yes.

Post this they moved onto watching the video of birds, balloons, kites, helicopter, aeroplane, etc. flying and we had a discussion on they each flew. They explained about how each of them fly,

K: Ma'am, I can see one bird and one baby bird. Balloons can also fly
F: But balloons don't have wings. So how do they fly?
H: With the air
H: When the wind, when somebody leave hands, they go up.
K: It can be popped like this <claps his hands together> pop!

Then came a kite,

F: How does a kite fly?
H, K: Air , Wind

Then a bird and a helicopter,
K: Eagle! It has wings like this <pretending to fly>
F: Next. What's this?
Collectively: Helicopter!
F: How does this helicopter fly?
K:With its wings
S: Propeller goes tugh tugh tugh
An: Helicopter go like this (up and down motion)
K: I have a drone in my house. Makes sound and hand movements

Out came an…..?K: Aeroplane!!!
F: How does an aeroplane fly?
An: Wings!
K: I know how to make the aeroplane with my hands
S: This aeroplane looks like it has wheels on the wings
F: That's an interesting observation. Why do they have wheels on the wings?
An: To land. When they are going up and come up, they need wheels to come down.
F: What about a helicopter? Does it have wheels?
K: No.
F: Then how does it land?
An: It jumps down
Ab: It'll go down

Sees a spaceshuttle flying

S: Rocket! Only space shuttles can go outerspace. Only spaceshuttle have fire

The conversations went on and on about various things that fly. Since children were fond of singing 'Fly Fly Fly The Butterfly' nursery rhyme, we thought it would be a great idea to get them all together and create extensions to it to sing about some of their favourite things that flew other than the butterflies.

Here is the result:

F: So let's make a song now. What all things fly?
H: Balloon
Aa: Jet pack, rubber band
S: Rocket
K: Space Shuttle
An: Ribbon
L: Bird, aeroplane
S: Helicopter