Australasian Journal of Early Childhood

ange of objects on the floor (such as feathers, foodand material), which they considered to be clues to helpsolve the classroom mystery.To relate this experience to the children, Emily helpedthem to develop a class hair colour pictograph. Usingphotos of the children’s head/hair and an existingtemplate for the pictograph, each child found theirphoto, identified their hair colour, and added the phototo the appropriate column on the pictograph. The classthen counted the number of children with each haircolour, and discussed the most common and leastcommon colours.Lesson 3: Discovering paw printsA messy ‘paw print’ was found in the classroom. Thechildren were invited to use their senses of touch, smelland sight to identify the substance on the print. Theywere provided with cottonbuds to take a small sampleof the substance. They went straight to the magnifyingglasses to allow a closer look at the evidence. Mostpredictions of what the substance might be centred onhoney. The children were finally allowed to test theirpredictions by tasting the substance (Emily having firstchecked for allergies). The messy handprint was indeeda honey handprint. Ideas of where the honey camefrom included ‘the bees made the honey and left it’,‘bad honey man’, ‘when the bear came in he droppedit’, ‘sneaking in and dropped the honey’, ‘bear pawswith honey’, and ‘eating the honey’.To relate this experience to the children, Emilyintroduced them to the concept of fingerprints and howeasy it is to leave marks behind that can indicate whereyou have been. The children were then invited to maketheir own set of fingerprints with blue ink, and observewhat they looked like with the magnifying glasses.Lesson 4: Who left the evidence?To draw the previous three lessons to a suitableconclusion, Emily reminded the children about theevidence they had collected, by referring to theevidence wall. She then asked each child to draw apicture of who left the evidence behind. Each childwas asked to provide an explanation of his/her drawingin relation to the evidence. Emily then wrote thesecomments onto the drawing.All children drew a picture. Six children drew a bear, threedrew a wolf/tiger/cat, three drew a monster, two drewbees, two drew dinosaurs, one drew a person, and onedrew a ghost. Two children believed a different animal/person was responsible for each piece of evidence.Table 5 presents a summary of the children’s drawingsand explanations in relation to the three types ofpossible evidence. Only six children drew pictures thatrelated to the evidence. Three children drew one typeof evidence, two children drew two types of evidence,while one child drew all three types. Footprints werethe main form of evidence drawn, occurring in 83 percent of the drawings. Fur occurred in half of thesedrawings, with paw prints/honey occurring in 33 percent. Figure 4 shows a drawing with two types ofevidence presented.Table 5. Summary of children’s drawings andexplanations in relation to the three types ofevidenceDrawingsrelated toevidenceEvidence n %respondingExplanationsrelated toevidencen %respondingFootprints 5 83 13 87Fur 3 50 6 40Paw prints/honey 2 33 7 47Childrenresponding6 15As highlighted by Ehrlén (2009), the children’sexplanations were found to be more detailed than theirdrawings. Fifteen children mentioned evidence in theirexplanation of their drawings (see Table 5). Of these,eight children mentioned only one type of evidence,three children mentioned two types of evidence, whilefour children mentioned all three types. Once again,footprints were the main form of evidence mentionedin the children’s explanation, occurring 87 per cent ofthe time. Fur and paw prints/honey occurred 40 percent and 47 per cent (respectively) of the time in thechildren’s explanations.Pooh bear because he eats honey. He has footprintseverywhere he goes (Explanation with drawing,child 1).The bear left the honey footprints. The bear tookit (the hair) off his skin and threw it on your coats.I want to talk about clue one. The bear left thefootprints (Explanation with drawing, child 2).A monster in a monster house. He was sneaking inand sloped honey on his foot and his hands. He tookthe hair off him and put it everywhere (Explanationwith drawing, child 4).A bear. He is trying to get the footprints (Explanationwith drawing, child 5).With assistance from Emily, the children then plannedan investigation around the question: What foods canwe make fingerprints with? The class decided whichfood they wished to use in the investigation and (againafter checking for allergies) Emily obtained the food.The five selected foods were Vegemite, butter, jam,52A u s t r a l a s i a n J o u r n a l o f E a r l y C h i l d h o o d