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Figure 5. The weather project documentation and display.
When a parent asks the inevitable, “what is my child learning?” Layla explains
that she points to the documentation indicating in detail the displayed evidence of
learning. The weather project documentation was extensive, reflecting months of
investigation. Previous “words of the day” were on display and the children could recall
their discussions about hurricanes, tornados, and hailstones. The children had created
drawings of the four seasons with their explanations recorded below. Underneath one
depiction of a life cycle of a tree, one child states “the seasons change because the earth is
tilting and sometimes it is closer to the sun and sometimes it is farther to the sun.” Books,
barometers, and thermometers were on display beside children’s three dimensional
representations of weather vanes. Interest in this topic was constantly renewed by
changing weather conditions. “Every time interest seemed to wane, mother nature
intervened.” The resources collected covered every inch of wall space and ranged from
diagrams and models to children’s images of various weather conditions.