SPL's Blog

Saturday was SPL’s big presentation at preschool. He and John have been working on it since the late fall. It’s project based learning for 3 year olds and each child got to choose his/her own topic.

For SPL and John, the project started with brainstorming ideas of things that interest SPL: rocket ships, gardening, barns, trains, Sammy the Seagull and his friends, and helping mommy all made the list. The final cut however was barns and trains.

After brainstorming, they thought of questions that SPL had about barns and trains:

— are there trains near our house?

— do trains go faster than cars?

— do trains go faster than airplanes?

— what color are barns?

— what do we use barns for?

Then they did some research: they went to Hidden Villa and got a tour (so had access to all the “behind the scenes” info) and then rode the Cal Train to San Jose and interviewed an amenable conductor.

they took some photos of their trips and then made some posters to show to the other kids.

What we learned about barns (by interviewing a docent @ Hidden Villa):
— Types of animals that live in barns: sheep, goats, chickens, pigs, cows, horses

— Barns have slanted roofs so the water runs off

— Horses need taller barns than other animals

— At Hidden Villa, they have many small barns (no horses)

What we learned about trains (interview of the CalTrain conductor):

— If you’re late, you have to wait for the next train

— Riding the train is bumpy

— The driver is called the Engineer (ours was named Axel)

–The wheels go on the tracks

— Our train can go 79 miles per hour

— you need a ticket to ride the train

In 15 kids’ presentations, there were only 2 overlaps, believe it or not: trains (2 boys did this topic) and dogs (a boy and a girl did this topic).

See more photos from preschool presentations