Artifacts [Kindergarten]

Inquiry into: objects as a point of departure; personal and cultural artifacts - objects which represent something about the person or something from the past and give some information about a culture or an individual
Methods: analyzing pictures, role play,

I started the unit "Artifacts" by asking children to imagine they were pirates, living on a remote island, and that they needed to venture on a treasure hunt as a ship has just reached the island.

Children are informed that hidden around the classroom are objects of personal value to me. All they needed to do is to look around for objects that they believed were precious to me and did not belong to the classroom.

Inspire children to begin asking questions about the ones who use the artifacts.

Show children pictures of other kids' bedrooms and let them make inferences of the hobbies and favorite food or color of the children, living in these rooms. What does this room tell you about the one who inhabits it?

• Characteristics of objects. Lesson on adjectives, describing objects such as smooth, rough, small, big, long, short, round, etc. Students "experience" the attributes by holding the object which possesses them and saying the attribute.

(rubber: small; ruller: long)

Warm up activity: magic bag (guess the object inside the bag based on adjective clues). Then, move to searching for objects (one by one) representative of each adjective category.

Drama: listen and mime - do the actions that correspond to the words

Listen to the story "The Scared Rabbit" and act out the familar words

Next, children are presented with the following artifacts and asked to identify the ones used by the rabbit on that cold night.

Following is a reflection of the story. Children need to draw what happened to the rabbit during the night - two events when he used one of the artifacts.

Next, what is the difference between an artifact and an ordinary object. Encourage children to generate questions

What does the item tell you?