Step Away From The Glue Gun.

Our kindergarten kids love to create and make. They love new materials. They squabble over fancy boxes that find their way into our maker space, squirrel away recycled material treasures in their cubbies, and find tiny beads and scraps of fabrics that none of us even knew were in the classroom. They especially love sticking …

The Personal Inquiry Conundrum

At the beginning of this year, the KG teaching team struggled with what to call our personal inquiry time - the time in our schedule that we dedicate to wholly student-directed inquiries. Through our discussions, we unearthed a much bigger issue to unpack: what IS personal inquiry time? What does it look like, consist of, …

Making ‘Calming Down’ Meaningful, Tangible, and Purposeful

At the beginning of this year, we were inquiring into How We Organise Ourselves. The students explored the various areas of the classroom, debated what kind of play and learning would be best in each, then voted and made agreements for how to use each area. The students agreed that we should have a quiet …

Free Inquiry? Open Inquiry? Free Play? What do we call it?

When I started at my new school last year, both Kindergarten and Grade One (5-6 and 6-7 year olds) had the entire morning session blocked out in their timetables as 'free inquiry time'. I was so pleased that my new school valued play and self-driven learning so highly that they dedicated an hour and a …

Student-Led Workshops in Personal Inquiry

A few weeks ago, during our pre-personal inquiry team meeting, one of our students mentioned that he'd been making plans to renovate our 'imagination play' area, but he had been doing it all on his own. We suggested that this might be a great opportunity for similarly-interested learners to join up and collaborate with this …

The Empowering Process of Reflection

The lightbulb moment came during a planning discussion and awoke a new sense of responsibility and maturity in our community of learners. ‘So… wait…. I think, we’re going to be the big kids? Woah… this is weird for my brain!’. In Kindergarten (KG), we are currently working through two significant transitions: Kindergarten’s upcoming move to …