Perceptions: Big and Small

Summary Week of September 30^th, 2013

Perceptions: Big and Small  

Last week the children explored using microscopes.  This week we switched to the opposite end of the spectrum and looked at objects through binoculars.  The children are more familiar with the binoculars, as we have several pairs in our classroom.  We walked outside to explore with the binoculars and see what types of objects we could see, and how they looked when using the binoculars.  At first the children just explored and did not talk much about what they observed.  They talked about seeing objects that were not within range, like a train (although we could hear the train off in the distance).  Some of the children pointed out objects on the playground; a tree, birds, slides, etc.  Each child looked through both ends of the binoculars, but most were especially fascinated with the side that made everything look small, kind of creating what we referred to as tunnel vision.  They children talked about how the objects far away looked small when viewing through the tunnel vision side.  They also noted the objects looked bigger when looking through the opposite end.  It appeared that all of the children realized the purpose of the binoculars was to see objects far away. 

Next week I would like to further explore this idea of tunnel vision and zooming in on an object.  The children really seemed fascinated by the idea of looking through this end of the binoculars and I would like to expand on their interest.  We will be looking through various lengths of tubes to create this idea of tunnel vision, while also incorporating this idea of big and small (where the length of the tube changes how much can be viewed).