The Kinder children have been on an amazing inquiry journey for the past few weeks. We started by looking at a bakery and discussing what we might find in a bakery. This has led us down an interesting journey around bakeries and now following some incredible observations and questions from the children. Currently we are engaged in some interesting experiments about yeast, as well as some other experiments exploring evaporation – because of course that is where you would end up after starting your inquiry about a bakery (with a view to investigating the concept of community, we will circle back eventually). We have been documenting our learning on a Learning Wall. This is an ever changing, living document that is messy, transient and provides us with a record of our learning and thinking, something to refer back to, and helps plan next steps. It also helps us to recall our thinking and see how our thinking has changed. To help us with these things, we have introduced more thinking routines which we use daily in Kinder. We have also learned about our brain neurons lighting up as we make new connections in our learning – so often you will hear children saying ‘I reckon my brain is lighting up now!’ as they discover something new. Metacognition for Kindergarteners – it sure has my brain lighting up! Suffice to say, Kindergarten is buzzing and you’re welcome to come and have a look at our learning wall sometime.

Here is a selection of questions and learning generated by the inquiry that are helping us to research and learn together. Remember, these children are 4 and 5 years of age and Iv'e written down exactly as they said them, pretty amazing!

“Is water alive?”

“I learned how the yeast eats the sugar!”

“Does yeast eat sugar all day, or does it eventually stop?”

“How does the yeast wake up if it is just food?”

“Yeast is alive?! Yeast must be an animal! Alive means it walks and talks.”

“How does yeast grow?”

“Where did the water go? I think it got soaked up in the ingredients.”

This is a small selection… we are working on doing some research and answering as many as we can.