Over the past several weeks, we have observed a significant increase in the children’s curiosity and engagement surrounding animals and their habitats. This emerging interest has been evident through their conversations, questions, imaginative play, and construction experiences. As educators, we view these moments as valuable opportunities to extend learning through inquiry-based exploration and child-led investigation.

Throughout the school day, the children have been exploring different types of animals, discussing their characteristics, and learning about which animals hibernate. These discussions have supported the development of early scientific thinking, classification skills, and an understanding of seasonal changes. The children have demonstrated growing awareness that animals have specific needs and that their environments play an important role in their survival.

This understanding has been particularly visible during open-ended play experiences. Many children have taken the initiative to design and construct their own environments for the animals available on our classroom cart. Using blocks, loose parts, and magnetic tiles, they have collaboratively built a variety of habitats. Some children have carefully constructed forest settings for woodland animals, while others have designed imaginative human habitats under tables and within cozy classroom spaces. These experiences support spatial awareness, problem-solving, engineering skills, and cooperative learning.

Importantly, the children’s constructions reflect their developing knowledge of animal habitats. For example, Claire shared, “Look Sam! This is my forest for my birds,” demonstrating her understanding that certain birds live among trees in forest environments. Deacon explained, “This is my human habitat,” as he used magnetic tiles to design a structured living space, showing his ability to transfer the concept of habitat to human environments. These moments highlight how children are synthesizing information and expressing their understanding through play.

In response to this sustained interest, we have decided to adopt “Animals and Their Habitats” as our long-term project focus. Over the coming months, we will engage in collaborative research, hands-on investigations, literacy experiences, creative arts activities, and outdoor explorations to deepen the children’s understanding. This project-based approach will allow us to follow the children’s questions and theories while fostering critical thinking, communication, and inquiry skills.

Some of the questions guiding our exploration include:

• “Where are turtles born?”
• “How do birds make nests?”
• “How do animals know when to wake up from hibernation?”

These thoughtful questions demonstrate the children’s emerging scientific reasoning and natural curiosity about the world around them. As we move forward, we will encourage the children to form hypotheses, gather information through books and observation, document their ideas, and reflect on their discoveries. We are excited to see how this project evolves and how the children continue to build their understanding of the interconnectedness between animals and their environments.

Our preschoolers recently engaged in a joyful and creative art experience that beautifully blended sensory exploration with meaningful self-expression.

The children created a vibrant flower bouquet by dipping their hands into pink paint and pressing handprints onto paper. Each handprint transformed into a unique “flower,” inviting the children to explore texture, colour, and early fine motor skills through a playful, hands-on process. The sensory experience of the cool paint and the act of stamping encouraged curiosity, creativity, and confidence in their artistic choices.

To extend the learning, the educator added green stems to each handprint, thoughtfully bringing the individual pieces together into one cohesive bouquet. This collaborative element helped the children see how their personal contributions could combine to create something even more beautiful as a group. It fostered a sense of belonging, teamwork, and shared accomplishment.

The finished artwork was proudly titled “Love You a Bunch,” celebrating connection, creativity, and the warmth that fills our classroom community.

We loved witnessing the children’s excitement and pride as they admired and shared their masterpiece — a true reflection of their joy and growing sense of self.

This month, the Preschool 2 room at RisingOaks Early Learning | St. Patrick has been exploring different cultures, self-identity, and positive ways to show kindness. Through meaningful conversations and hands-on experiences, the children have been building a deeper understanding of themselves and the world around them. Recently, the children began showing a strong interest in different occupations, as dramatic play continues to spark their curiosity. By providing activities that reflect real-life skills, the children have been able to expand their play in incredible ways.

These opportunities support multiple areas of development, including science, sensory exploration, and social learning, while opening the door for new questions and discoveries. As part of our classroom discussions, the children became curious about holidays and cultural celebrations. In acknowledgement of Black History Month and Lunar New Year, we explored traditions that represent these important celebrations. To celebrate Lunar New Year, the children participated in a group dragon dance, learning how movement and tradition bring people together. They also created their own dragon using loose parts, allowing them to explore creativity while learning about cultural representation. To honour Black History Month, we read storybooks that highlighted kindness, empathy, and the importance of learning from one another. These stories became a powerful steppingstone in helping the children understand emotions and recognize how the words we use can affect others. One story we explored was Don’t Touch My Hair, which introduced the idea of self-expression and setting personal boundaries.

Through open discussion, the children practiced “standing up for their voice” and using their big voices to respectfully communicate their needs and feelings. We also explored the impact of words through meaningful visual activities. In one activity, the children said unkind words to a piece of paper while we crumpled it. Even after apologizing and smoothing it out, the paper remained wrinkled, helping the children understand that words can leave lasting effects. In another activity, we used an apple to demonstrate how hurtful words can cause unseen damage. As the apple was dropped after each unkind comment, the children later saw the bruising inside, creating a powerful moment of reflection. Together, we discussed how we can turn negative actions into positive behaviour. From these conversations, the children shared thoughtful ideas on how to show kindness, including standing up for their friends, asking others to join their play, not taking toys, offering help or a hug when someone feels upset, and cheering each other on as they reach milestones, big or small.

These moments have  helped strengthen their sense of empathy, belonging, and community within the classroom. Another meaningful group activity was the creation of individual self-identity collages. Through open-ended questions, the children  eflected on what they like, who they are, and who they dream of becoming. This activity connected deeply with their interest in occupations and helped us create opportunities to support real-life skill development aligned with the four  foundations of learning. Each child shared their ideas with the group, allowing us to reflect on our similarities, celebrate our differences, and appreciate each other’s dreams. As we continue forward, we remain committed to nurturing  the children’s curiosity by bringing real-world tools and experiences into our classroom.

This month at RisingOaks Early Learning | St. Patrick, the toddler 2 children at RisingOaks Early Learning | St.Patrick have explored their interest with cooking. This interest emerged earlier in the month, with the children using plastic food, the play kitchen, and utensils to pretend to make meals, eat, and serve them to peers continuously throughout their day. This has sparked the beginning of our project in the toddler 2 classroom, where we have been introducing different foods, cooking ideas and materials used in the kitchen. In the kitchen area, Deborah provided pictures of different fruits and vegetables seeing the toddlers interest as they named fruits such as banana, carrots and pepper. When the new pictures were added, Augustus and Clementine were first to recognize corn and avocado. Those that were unfamiliar with the vegetables repeated words such as kale with Deborah. Nancy displayed a table set with plates, utensils and cups for the toddlers to use in their play. The toddlers used the stuffed animals as guests at their table, serving food on the plates and pretending that their stuffed animals were eating the food. Cileena added baking trays into the kitchen for the toddlers to use to place food, cook up meals, and serve food. Adding felt cookie cut outs the toddlers used the trays baking cookies using the spatulas to remove and pat the cookies into place. The magnetic trays allowed the toddlers to use magnetic letters and explore making words and menus. As a way for the toddlers to deepen their understanding of fruits and veggies, Deborah also made a Velcro “find and match” menu where the toddlers could match pictures of different fruits and veggies to the picture on the menu. As they place the picture they name the fruits or veggies. Zoey pointed out an orange as she matched her orange picture to the menu. Robbie has been interested in reading food books like, “rah, rah, radishes” from our classroom library. This book rhymes fruits and veggies in a clever way pulling the toddlers in to listen as it is being read. To introduce different cooking utensils into their play, Cileena added spatulas, whisks, serving spoons, and potato mashers into the kitchen. To help them understand how to use them, the toddlers used them as paintbrushes in a painting activity seeing the different textures and lines they left behind as they used them. The toddlers are beginning to learn and understand cooking in a deeper sense. To further expand their learning, our next steps will be to have the toddlers make their own snack which they can make and enjoy proudly.