The Bird Road

The Process of Documentation
Documentation can look many different ways. In previous posts you have seen documentation involving a single child and in other posts two or more children. The documentation of a child's experience can happen in a single interaction with one teacher or over several days or months involving many children and teachers.
There are also many different forms in which the documentation can be presented. As you will see in this post the teachers use several methods to make the children's learning visible. The teachers may type out their observations after making notes while working on the floor or include their handwritten work. You will often see photos along with the actual drawings, art and creations that the children made during this exploration. This hallway of documentation is an representation of the process of documentation. 

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The Bird Road
We have been making a variety of bird feeders over the past several months. We have made them by spreading peanut butter on large pinecones and rolling them in bird seed; combining bird seed and molasses and pressing them into shapes; stringing popcorn and cranberries; scooping out oranges and filling them with bird seed and making a bird feeder from a plastic bottle.

We have hung all of the feeders outside of the kitchen window. We built a bird blind over the window so we could observe the birds when they came to eat at our feeders. Wewould see the birds but they wouldn't see us.

Cadence pointed out that not only do the birds not have to see us it is also important to be very quiet at the window so noise doesn't scare the birds away.

January 16, 2013

At group time today we talked about the birds and looked out the bird blind. We noticed the birds haven't eaten very much from our bird feeders?

We asked the children why the birds haven't been eating much?

Kaleb: Because we just made them.

Talya: They just don't want to eat it right


Kaleb: They don't like us right now.

Rowan M: Let's build a road for the birds.

Sotaro, Cassandra, Milo, Talya, Kaleb, Fynn, and Rowan seemed to like the idea of building a road for the birds so they would come and eat from our bird feeders so we can watch them.

They made drawings of what the road would look like.

Rowan M, Sotaro and Milo used blocks to show what the road could look like for the birds.

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Monday, January, 21, 2013

Revisiting documentation and looking through the bird blind.

Fortune, Kaleb, Talya and Saskia

The children noticed that there are no birds to be seen :

Kaleb: “There’s nothing!”

Fortune: “There’s no birds!”

Lise: “I wonder why?”

Kaleb: “Maybe we need a road!”

Talya: “Yah!”

Lise: “If we were to build a road, what would we need?”

Fortune: “Concrete! We would need sand and mix it… My dad has a mixer!”

Fortune: “We could build a little tunnel.”

Kaleb and Fortune become excited about this idea. As a group I suggest that we go in the resource room to research the materials we have and get inspired by the materials…

Kaleb and Fortune discover the long cardboard tubes. We all carry an assortment of sizes as well as some long and narrow V shaped cardboard back to the table for exploration.

Lise: “How big would this tunnel need to be for the birds to fit in?”

Fortune: “As big as the bird.” “This one is good.”

Kaleb: “Yes! So the birds could fly in.”

Fortune; “With food into it so the birds would get in and stay warm with food at the end.” (Fortune cups her hands together in a container like or trough shape.)

Stay tuned for further documentation on our "Bird Road"...