Teacher Jessica Talks About Planning the Roly-Poly Exploration
Jessica: I'm going to pass out a roly-poly. The reason that we decided to do the roly-poly as an activity was because I noticed the children, during outside time, found roly-polies, and they discovered that they were under the ground, and they discovered that they could be picked up, and they put it on their hand. So, they were trying to figure out why they rolled.
Child: This one!
Jessica: Why did Gina's curl up in a ball? [Indistinct shouting] They went under the grass? So, I wanted to bring the outside environment to the inside of our classroom. And so, what we decided to do was that on Monday we just, for example, talked about what is a roly-poly. What do we know about the roly-poly?
[Speaking to girl]
Are they insects?
Girl: No!
Jessica: What are they?
Boy: Crustacean!
Jessica: They're crustacean animals. What are crustaceans?
Girl No. 2: We read it right there.
Jessica: That's a crustacean animal. It's like the cousin of the crab or the lobster, right? How many eyes does it have?
Children: Two.
Jessica: Two. Did you see that if it —
Boy: Two like humans.
Jessica: Two like us. It has two eyes like we do.
Boy: Two like a lobster!
Jessica: And lobsters, yeah! And then the next day, we decided to go out and find them in their environment, and then we decided to explore them in our classroom. So, it was hands-on, the children were able to touch them, use their senses to really look at them with their eyes, to really explore them, and if they had any other questions that they wanted to learn about the roly-polies, then we were there to answer those questions, and if we didn't know, we were gonna find out as we explored.
Boy No. 2: [Indistinct]
Jessica: So, as a result of what I saw today, I asked them if we would do roly-polies again, what would they like to add to this activity. What do you want to know about roly-polies?
Girl: What they eat.
Jessica: What they eat? So, I asked them what kinds of foods that they would eat, and some of them gave suggestions like tomatoes, strawberries, oranges.
Girl: Apple, strawberry.
Jessica: Apples and strawberries. So, we're gonna bring those in the classroom, and we're going to explore how roly-polies eat. That's what they want to find out next.
Listen as Jessica talks about why and how she planned the roly poly learning experience for her preschool students.
