Googling the Great Outdoors With Kids
At a recent trip to the nursery I spotted a plant I had been eyeing off for a while heavily marked down. Something had been nibbling on one of its large, ornamental leaves but apart from that it was fine. What I didn’t realise was that I would be bringing the very-hungry-something home with us! The next day I noticed the second of the plant’s large leaves eaten, and by the following day the plant was almost annihilated! I decided it was time for some detective work, and wasn’t really surprised to find a huge caterpillar tucked out of view down inside a stalk.
The kids and I retrieved the sneaky culprit and put him in a box for further investigation. We talked about the caterpillar’s colour and markings. We watched the way it moved. We took note of its size and the funny “tail” at the end. We talked about what colour butterfly it might turn into and wondered how we could find out…?
So then we pulled down an enyclopedia. Oh hang on, no – that’s not what we did. We googled it. Here’s how I guided Little Miss 3 through an internet search:
Me: We want to find more information. Google can help us find information. What information do we want to find?
LM3: We want to find out about what our caterpillar will turn into.
Me: That’s a lot of words. Can you tell me one word? We want to know about…?
LM3: Caterpillars
Me: Ok, let’s type c-a-t-e-r-p-i-l-l-a-r-s. That says caterpillars.
LM3: That sure is a big word Mum!
Me: Do we want to know about AAALLLL the caterpillars in the world? Or just the caterpillars where we live?
LM3: Just where we live.
Me: And where do we live? In B…
LM3: Brisbane!
Me: Ok, let’s type B-r-i-s-b-a-n-e. There. So now we’re asking Google (point) to tell us information about caterpillars (point to word) in Brisbane (point to word). Can you click here?
I’m not fussed on young kids playing heaps of computer games, but I think there is a lot of value to be had in early, purposeful use of technology.
We found a couple of useful sites and looked at various pictures of caterpillars to identify our own. There was so much fantastic language involved in this process as we eliminated images. Too green. Too spotty. Too hairy! Once we found some caterpillars that were similar we could look at more subtle detail like the four yellow spots, and the funny “tail”. Eventually we found a match… we think! Our best guess is that our very hungry caterpillar will become a Hawk Moth…
My daughter enthusiastically took her caterpillar to kindy today and shared her new found knowledge with her classmates.
We love learning together. Did you learn something with your kids today?
It’s an emperor butterfly. x
.-= Caro´s last blog ..Plants kids can play with #3 A Seuss plant =-.
Miss 3 and I talked about cumulus clouds and stratus clouds today. Looked for cloud pictures and talked about rain clouds and non rain clouds. I have a little scientist in the making here, She is so much like her dad it’s not funny.
@Caro
Really?!! LOL Maybe this mama needs to re-google! Will get back to you.
I still think it’s from the sphingidae family…
I have no idea but I love googling.
What a great idea to introduce the computer as a learning toy !
.-= Trish´s last blog ..Post it Tuesday #17 =-.
@Caro
Reckon this is our hungry mate…
http://lepidoptera.butterflyhouse.com.au/sphi/tryoni.html
My daughter received the game “What’s Gnu?” for her birthday and wanted to know what a gnu was. My husband googled it and then pulled up a YouTube video so she could see one “for real” and then found a Sesame Street sketch featuring a gnu puppet. I LOVE technology.
.-= Christianne @ Little Page Turners´s last blog ..Playdough Easter Mountain =-.
My daughter always tells me to look things up on the “puter” when I don’t have an answer to questions like “what do ladybirds eat?”. You would be surprised at how many responses actually come up under a listing like that!
.-= amandab´s last blog ..Postcrossing =-.
As a fellow teacher (of big kids), I am totally grateful for your insights into teaching the little ones… It will come in very handy in the next few years =) Thank you!
I think that computers are wonderful when they are used in this way. And perfect for young kids with short attention spans who are caught in the excitement of the moment of discovery – the speed you can access information helps to really build on the interest and enhance the learning experience.
We had a google catepillar hunt recently when my son was catching green catepillars at school and wanted to find out what kind of butterflies they would turn into. He is a bit older but there is so much learning going on when they do this: learning how to learn and find out; literacy as they type and read information; finding something that will spark off another area of interest; sharing information with other people.
Now if only he ONLY used the computer for this!
.-= jenny´s last blog ..progressive schools – the real revolution in education =-.
There is the perfect example of appropriate meaningful use of technology for young children!
We google for things like this often, or we use the computer to look up our library web site to find if they have a book on the subject… or I send them to school to ask their teacher! LOL
.-= katef´s last blog ..Pregnancy – Third Time Round. =-.
We used Google regularly in my child care centre to find information related to all sorts of topics which the children were interested in. What would we do without the wonders of Google? Go to the library and look in the encyclopedia I guess, which is a little more difficult with a group of small children.
.-= Christie @ Childhood 101´s last blog ..Kids Create: Tissue Paper Fun =-.
This isn’t even *just* for the littlies – a friend of mine (who is still amazed by what google can do) and I were recently in the park & found a tree with little red berries on it. Neither of us was quite sure what they were (but at 31yo, she’d already eaten an unknown berry! Maybe I’m too careful, but I wouldn’t eat it until I knew what it was) so we googled it – the result? Mulberries – I’d never seen them before.. I <3 google!
Once a teacher, always a teacher LOL
.-= Janet´s last blog ..The Next Step =-.
What a fabulous use of technology! My oldest is obsessed with snails and we’ve been watching You Tube videos of the giant snails that can be as big as a persons forearm. Freaky but she loves it.
Last year we got a home reader from school about world dances. After we read it we looked up each of the types of dance on YouTube. It made the whole experience much more fun.
hehehe Cath – Jack told me all about Lily’s caterpillar that was going to turn into a Hawk Moth while he was having a bath tonight! I hadn’t read your blog yet so found it quite funny to see that Jack really did listen to Lily about her caterpillar! Thanks for sharing – Jack obviously was very interested in the caterpillar as it made it to the ‘news’ from his day at Kindy – boys are such hard work to get much info out of them about what happens at Kindy – so it must really have spiked Jack’s interest for him to tell us about it!
Oh and PS. Matt want’s to know where you got your bug catcher from?? Apparently it is the BeeKnees of bug catcher’s in Matt and Jack’s book!
@Jess
It’s a great bug catcher! Folds down into a little pocket too so wonderful for taking out places. It was the grand sum of about $5 from the MTA clearance place (Toy Outlet) at Brendale
what a cute story. it’s cool the way you turned it into a learning experience.
[...] As SquiggleMum has already pointed out – Google is a fabulous tool for finding out all sorts of things. We [...]
Love this, for the of-the-moment take on technology. I wrestle, always, with this question, then pause to notice how much I use the comp, for all kinds of important things. Thanks for pointing out a bit of advocacy.
.-= molly´s last blog ..super =-.