Memories of a kindergarten castle (and frog) inquiry: “What is it like to live in a castle?” (and, “How do you catch a frog?”)

This inquiry was an exceptionally imaginative one that began with lots of dramatic play about kings, queens, knights, and dragons, and morphed into a quest to catch a frog (prince?)! Cross-curricular connections to math (time, mass/capacity), language, dance, and drama.

Read below about this learning journey, including my reflections on the benefits of learning through inquiries based both in the realm of imagination AND in the real world of true facts and observable details.

. . .

Memories of a Castle (and Frog) inquiry -

"What is it like to live in a castle?" (and "How do you catch a frog?")

I can't recall what sparked this inquiry, but I do remember the fun our students had imagining they were real kings, queens, princes, princesses, and knights who lived in medieval times or who were characters in fictional stories they'd read or watched.

As we began this inquiry, the costumes and the big blocks came out so we could build castles and experience life like royalty. We pored over fiction and nonfiction books to get ideas about the kinds of food to make at the playdough table, the kinds of costumes, accessories, and toy castles to make at the art table, and the kinds of stories to act out about when playing together.

We examined diagrams of castle architecture, including walls, moats, horse stables, and drawbridges. We set up a woodworking station so students could build castles, and boats for the moat. We saw illustrations of villages with peasants who lived and worked in the fields around the castles. We learned about specifics of castle life, like what times the gardeners, cleaners, court jesters, and cooks did their particular jobs, what times the royalty woke up, ate meals, and how they entertained themselves. (And we learned to use a clock to tell time so we'd do things accurately). Students choreographed dances and performed plays for the class. All of this helped us to make our classroom castle life as true to what we saw in our books as possible.

We noticed illustrations of large banquet halls in our books, and when one student asked if we could plan a 'castle feast', we wrote recipes and procedures to make soup, rice krispie squares, and jello - the students' top picks for foods at a feast - and then wrote a letter inviting the principal and vice-principal to come to the "Great Hall" to be our guests of honour. When they finally arrived, to our astonishment and delight, they were dressed as a king and a queen!

Outdoors, too, the students' play focused on castle life (e.g. what we'd eat and where we'd sleep and play), and what would happen outside the castle walls (e.g. attacks from dragons and robbers, life in peasant villages, and knights going to battle). It was all very imaginative! We trained our horses (scooters), and had horse races. We had 'knight tournaments' too, like long jump contests and running races. A highlight for many students was designing and then making 'minnow traps' to try to go fishing in the 'moat' (pond). We wrote every day about our castle adventures in our outdoor learning journals.

One day, a student said "I watched a castle movie last night! It was 'The Princess and the Frog.'" Another student said, "we should catch a frog!" This excited everyone and took our inquiry in a whole new direction as we wondered "How do you catch a frog?"

We researched what frogs like to eat and what their homes are like so we could make enticing traps, then we drew our plans and worked in teams to build five different traps. We set the traps in our pond, and checked on them every day. While we waited to trap one, we designed and then created a suitable frog habitat in our classroom. We looked at lots of frog books from the library and learned about frog life cycles. One of our lunch buddies brought tadpoles to school for us so we added them to our habitat and watched them grow.

Each day when we went to the pond to check our traps, we dipped buckets into the pond water to see what other living things we might find. We saw little wiggling things and when we did some research, we learned that they were mosquito babies ('tumblers'). We were excited to find many tumblers and learned all about mosquitoes' life cycles.

We didn't have any luck trapping a frog, but one exciting day a student finally saw a frog BESIDE one trap and caught it with her hands! We were thrilled and brought it inside right away. It was so fun to have another pet to observe and wonder about up close. The day after we caught the frog, we were surprised to return to school in the morning to discover that it had eaten our biggest tadpole! We never knew grown-up frogs would eat tadpoles!

Reflections:

Ever since our pirate inquiry, our inquiries had focused on 'nonfiction' topics, like dinosaurs, maple syrup, and Spring. During this inquiry it was enjoyable to return to an imaginative, more 'fictional' way of playing and learning, as we imagined about kings, princesses, dragons, and fairy tales. This facilitated a lot of creativity and dramatic play. At the same time, we ended up with new 'nonfiction' learning based on our outdoor experiences with mosquitoes, tadpoles, and frogs. Inquiries based on imaginative topics AND inquiries focused solely on true facts and observable details BOTH have value for making learning meaningful.