By Ibu Nova

An Inquiry into Natural Environments The Kindergarten students inquired into natural environments under our Transdiciplinary Theme: Sharing the Planet. As a provocation, we invited Year 3 students to present their projects about biomes and introduce the Kindergarten children to various natural environments. The Year 3s talked about and showed the environments, (e.g. forests, deserts), and the living things that we would find in each one. After they presented, the Kindergarten students had their time to observe and ask questions about the Year 3 dioramas. We loved how the Year 3 students explained their projects and answered the younger students’ questions, showing patience and enthusiasm for Kindergarten’s curiosity. We’d like to say thank you to the Year 3 students who came and lent us their dioramas for 2 weeks to support our learning in this Unit.

Being an Inquirer, Children are naturally curious about their environment and we support their curiosity by having them practics formulating questions about all the things they want to know. Since we promote Approaches to Learning (ATL) skills, we strongly encourage the students to ask questions as part of developing their research skills. They are learning to get information from the surrounding environment through the 5 senses, or through media such as videos, books or posters, then ask questions if they are curious about something they experienced. Here are samples of the recorded questions they asked.