“I see a swoosh! Look!”
Kindergarten scientists this week, and last, have been exploring the world’s first Spatial Alphabet, developed by Na2ure.org. This week, students were joined in their garden explorations by Trina Clemans, a visiting educator who directs Economic and Entrepreneurship Education at Collegiate Independent School in Virginia. Trina has been helping to pilot an interactive app for the alphabet around the country, supporting students with visualization tools for capturing and labeling the alphabet principles they see in front of them. In the garden, students searched for examples of these basic building block patterns of space, symmetry and growth in the plants, abiotic features (like sand, soil, rocks, and built materials), and in themselves and each other – one student said, “It looks just like my smile!”
It looks just like my smile!
Using cards of clear laminate with each element drawn on top, students can hold the patterns like a looking glass and search for evidence of their presence anywhere! Students even noticed that, by using a magnifying glass in combination with the pattern card, they could find even more examples at a different scale. Experiences identifying, describing, and experimenting with pattern, symmetry, geometry, and spatial reasoning support students’ mathematical, scientific and design learning, help them develop curiosities, and help them practice more accurate and acute observation, even in familiar places.
We’re grateful to visitors like Trina for sharing additional insights about the Spatial Alphabet from her travels, connecting our students’ work with others around the globe!
I loved visiting Hillbrook and working with your clever and kind students and teachers. We had some much fun! Thank you for the invitation.