The biggest problem I have is with the traditional curriculum’s that seem to think that teaching the ABC’s and numbers and colors is what early childhood curriculum is all about. It’s so sad.

Early childhood curriculum should be about LIFE  and incorporating everything children need to know into these life experiences.

Learning needs to be relevant and learning ABC’s and colors and numbers can be made so much more relevant if they are done in the concept of life.

I did some posts awhile ago about curriculum that may shed some light on what curriculum is all about.

The first one talks about how to incorporate learning into life and curriculum by creating an integrated curriclum.

The second one gave some real live examples of how to set up and plan an integrated curriculum or as we call it planning for a progressive early childhood curriculum.

The truth is in my opinion if you can’t get your head around a progressive curriculum and don’t really know how to run one, the most important thing in any early childhood setting is getting the art right.

Getting away from that copycat arts and crafts and start bringing some real educational art into your early childhood environment.

Now I have a question for anyone reading this blog.

I have another blog that I spend alot more time on, the educational art thoughts one and I would put more effort into this one if I see there is more interest in it.

So if you are out there and want me to keep posting on a more regular basis, make a comment to let me know.

You know there’s nothing like some incentive of knowing people want to hear what you have to say to keep writing. And believe me there is lots to write about, I just want to know if its what people want to read.

So let your voice be heard. (If you’re interested)

Kindergarten and preschool and art are almost synonymous. Which kindergarten, preschool or any early childhood education classroom or home school program does not have some kind of art on a daily basis.

You may have seen my other blog called educational art thoughts where I present all kinds of educational art activities and thoughts about art for those interested in young children and their art. For the most part that would be early childhood teachers, school or home based and even art teachers.

My theories are called Educational Art and can be divided into three types of activities for  children. In this post I will discuss how you can bring educational art into a center based classroom using a Three Part Art approach.

In Educational Art, art can be divided into three parts.

1. Crafts (projects for holidays, special days, etc.)
2. Process only art activities (painting, clay, collage etc.)
3. The art center (daily challenges)

Many teachers who do use a center based curriculum where the children work independently at these centers during their work period use the art center mostly as a place to store their art supplies.

Many teachers feel they don’t really know HOW to use the art center as a truly thriving area that the kids can use independently without resorting to just using it as a place for structured activities.

The truth is you don’t need to do the crafts and process only activities in the art center. As long as you have table elsewhere in the classroom you can have all three of the three part art activities going on at the same time.

One table can host a crafts activity, another a process only art activity and third the table that is the real important one that is needed to run a good art center actually needs to be be either IN or NEAR the art center.

What should actually be going on in the art center?

Now I don’t know about you but when I was teaching I was always looking for more ideas for my centers to offer during the work period.

Adding a real art center certainly does add to their choices and benefits.

When you give the children the options available for that work period there can be

1-Collage with triangles on one table

2-Make a flag at the crafts table and

3- Go check out the art center.

So in the art center basic art supplies are stocked for the kids to use to make things that they may need for other centers like food for their dramatic play area or signs for their blocks

But the main thing that should be going in in the art center is daily challenges.

Every 2-3 days you should add something new in that area for the children to  be able to go over and experiment and create with the materials that are available that day without a specific creation in mind.

The children that love art will gravitate towards this center and the ones that are more scared of art may watch from a  distance and then join in at a later date.

Some ideas for challenges

• Add a hole puncher and string
• Put out different shapes papers
• Add some aluminum foil and  markers
• Wallpaper samples with pinked scissors
• Long rectangular papers and straws
• Remove scissors one day
• Folded papers
• Papers with some beginning lines on them and marks

These are just some basic ideas to start you off and help you come up with your own ideas to keep the art center fresh and exciting.

Once you get into the habit of including the different ideas and challenges that you are going to include in your art center, the children will be looking forward to seeing what is new in the art center and what can they create over there.

For homeschoolers

The same exact thing can be done in your home by utilizing a box that you can call a mystery box. The children can check  to see what is in their box that day they can create with. with kids at home they can even be part of adding things to the mystery box.

If you come up with some great innovations to add to your art center or mystery I’d love  to hear about ‘em.

Block building is NOT just for early childhood, kindergartner and nursery classrooms.

As you can see above, here are some old unit blocks that I still have in my home from when my children were little.

As you can see they are quite old and well used.

I had been an early childhood teacher for many years and was on leave to stay home with my children.

I had very little money and my mother was aghast when I insisted on buying a full set of unit blocks for my kids.

It was  a great choice and while unit blocks and block play activities are indispensable for an early childhood classroom they are great for home schoolers or anyone with young children at home.

I think  you can tell from the image what type of blocks I’m talking about (even though they don’t look so nice and clean) but when I speak about block building it is for the specific type of blocks called unit blocks.

If you have never come across unit blocks and are confused as to what they are exactly compared to other standard blocks, than you can check out over here the different block types.

Unit blocks that are used for block play when block building yet have so much learning that can be taking place during the play,and I’d like to share some of it with you.

As there is so much to talk about with blocks I am going to divide this topic into 2 posts so its easier to read.

The first post will deal with some of the stages to expect in block building, storing and presenting the blocks,tips for getting kids to clean up the blocks and rules of block building

The second post will deal with specific activities to do in the block area and during block play, activities that tie into math and reading and accessories to add to block play.

Stages in Block Building

Believe it or not children do go through specific stages and Harriet Johnson from The Art of Block Building (I think the only copies left are collectors copies)
explains them simply

1. Blocks are carried around by children under 2 and not really used
2. At age 2-3 building begins. Mostly horizontal and vertical stacking
3. Bridging. They use 2 blocks with a space between with a 3rd connecting
4. Enclosures
5. Decorative patterns appear. Symmetry is concentrated on
6. Buildings get named
7. Dramatic play is tied into block play

I am just giving you these stages in order for you to realize that there actually ARE stages to this activity.

Now remember. These stages are not cut in stone, not every child goes through them at the same rate  as sometimes they go through the stages so quickly you don’t  even see them all.  (”Oh Hey was that a stage they just went through?”)

Presenting the Blocks

• Blocks should be stored lengthwise so children can see the sizes. A full range of sizes and shapes are available with unit blocks that you can buy individually through many preschool and kindergarten supply companies  and if you’d like you can see a unit block size and shape chart.
• The heaviest and longest blocks should go on the bottom. Try no to overcrowd.
• If you have the specific block shelves that are sold by school furniture companies then you can cut out the shape of the block by tracing around the block onto a piece of construction paper and paste it onto the space where those blocks should go.
• It is much better to have more of the basic unit shapes than many of the odd shapes that are available with these sets.
• Make sure to put your shelves with blocks in it near an open space that is not too crowded that the children can build comfortably in.You can find some more info here about  setting up the block area

Rules of Block play

The same way art needs rules like no eating glue or cutting peoples hair, block play has guidelines that need to be adhered to.

• No hitting ANYONE with a  block (pretty self understood would you think?)or writing on them
• Don’t build too close to shelves
• Don’t take blocks form other kids buildings
• Don’t build too close to another ones building
• No knocking down other buildings
• No walking on blocks
• Children need to know how high they can build, so set this one up according to your specifications
• No hoarding. Take blocks as needed (unless a particular child really needs to take some next to him/ her to build)

Clean up tips

Clean up can be fun with blocks and other times there are children who didn’t even play with the blocks who actually like to clean ‘em up (I know it’s hard to believe but it’s true)

1. Give timely warnings. Like  5-10-minutes left until cleanup
2. Acknowledge the building before cleaning up. For work and effort, design, patterns etc. If you can’t leave it up and the child is very sad about it, take a picture of it before they take it apart.
3. Help with clean up. Yup that always works. I’ve even seen with my kids at home that when I help, it gets done.
4. Have children do different jobs. Example: Shirley, you do the units, Matthew, you do the 1/2 units etc. OR everyone pick up  x amount of blocks or now everyone do units and now quads, or lets fill up this shelf first.
5. Let children make piles of 3-5 blocks on floor first of same shapes and then have kids each find piles of “5″ blocks to put away.
6. Let children move blocks on chairs (bulldozers) or trucks to the shelves

Remember block pickup can be fun.

Next post I will be talking about the learning that goes on during block building activities but if you want to check out some of these articles you will certainly learn from them.

Opportunities for learning by Harriet Cuffaro who was actually my teacher in Bank Street College way back in the 80’s and Blocks, math and literacy

If you want to check out longer pieces on block play as opposed to just some articles you can check out these 2 wonderful books Block Play and  Teaching Numeracy, Language, and Literacy with Blocks

Even though there are many places that sell unit blocks I see that Amazon sells a small starter set called Melissa & Doug 60-Piece Standard Unit Blocks

But if you want to go with a  more substantial set I would try one of the the other sets from Amazon Unit Blocks – 110 Piece Set

So that’s it for this first post on block building. It gives me great memories writing this as I remember the pleasure I got out of my own children and my students playing with these wonderful blocks.

Preschool and kindergarten activities take place many times throughout the day.

Circle time or teaching time as some preschool teachers call it, outdoor time, trips, extra activities like music and library etc.

The  preschool activities that I am going to address here are the ones that take place in the centers of a center based classroom during the work period.

I call the time that the children spend in the centers work period because first of all  children’s  play IS work as you can read in this piece called The Importance of Play and secondly if the centers are set up correctly the children can actually be using thinking and problem solving skills along with their play which is called work according to even traditional theories.

Ideally this is the way a good preschool and kindergarten curriculum should be run. I have a few past posts that talk about What  is  a work period and in general what an integrated curriculum is all about

Units or themes can be planned and activities that are connected to that theme can be added to the different centers. This way the whole curriculum is cohesive.

If you are homeschooling your child you can probably do a center based type of curriculum on a scaled back version but you can certainly use the center ideas and activities. (You just cant have them all going on at the same time).

Two ways to run centers

Center in a kindergarten or nursery classroom can be dealt with in 2 ways.

You can fill up each area  or center with what you want to put in and just let it sit there the whole year.

Another way is to keep changing the centers to make the learning more exciting and actually more interesting to the children.

It’s like when you take away some the children’s games and toys for a few months and then take them down again, its’ like you bought new toys and they are as excited about them as if you just purchased them.

I am going to spend time going through each center and how to get the most out of it.

In this post I will start by concentrating on the dramatic play area, or as many call it the house or housekeeping area.

It definitely can be ONLY a house area if you set it up that way and leave it as such.

It becomes a dramatic play area when you turn the area into other types of places like fire houses, doctors offices etc.

So lets begin our center talk by starting with the dramatic play area.

Dramatic Play Area

If you are an early childhood educator you must be aware of how important it is for children to be able to play and act out what is ging on in their lives.

The children learn social skills and it often helps them deal with difficult situations that are going on in their lives.

The basic set up of a dramatic play area would be the classic housekeeping stuff.

The set up will be determined by the schools budget and if you are a home schooler and want to create a small area like this in your home for your preschoolers and how much energy and creativity YOU want to put into this.

Many of the materials don’t have to be from expensive educational resources if you can find some of the things you need at home or from parents of the children.

Some of the materials you may need.

Housekeeping area

• Small table
• Children’s chairs
• Kitchen equipment like stove, sink refrigerator
• Mirror
• Small rug
• Small dolls bed
• Baby carriage
• High chair
• Dress up clothes
• Fake food
• Dishes

You should try to add the items that are common to the place you live in and common to the children s lives.

If you know that none of these children have any babies in their homes maybe you would not want to put baby paraphnelia in there.

What is considered common to a farm family in USA will not necessarily be the same as city people in South Africa

One way if integrating the centers is by allowing the children to create food and other items they may need in the art area for use in their housekeeping area.

Curriculum and the dramatic play area

Here’s where you can tie curriculum into real life.

If you are basing your unit on a trip that you took then it would be a good idea to turn the dramatic play area into that area for a certain period.

You can also listen to how the children are playing and bring in items to help them play out what they are doing anyway.

Market

You can add a

• Cash register
• Fake fruits and vegetables
• Bakets or bags that are used to carry purchases
• Step stools for stacking items
• Large boxes

Doctors office

• White coat
• Doctors kit (with stethoscope, fake needles, blood pressure cuff)
• Table, mattress or little bed for kids to be checked
• Table for receptionist
• Forms for kids to fill out

If you have any friends that are doctors you may want to ask him or her if they have any old stuff that they are not using anymore that you can use for the children

Fire Station

• Fire hats
• Hoses
• Big boots
• Homemade fire truck from boxes

I found this post about a classroom that actually set up some fire station play.

In this classroom they were actually using math skills at the same time.

Very often you don’t need need that much to transform the area into a different place for the children.

If you have children from different cultures you can even read up on the countries they come from and try to make the area a different country every few weeks or month.

I knew a teacher who used to keep boxes of items stored together for when the time arose.

If she saw the children playing Doctor, out would come the doctor box. Fire Station, out would come the fire station stuff.

The examples I gave you above may be some of the most common but if you keep your ears open and use your own creativity, I am sure you can come up with many different exciting ways to give the children fresh experiences in the dramatic play are PLUs other items to add to the ones I listed above.

To me, a Bank Street graduate, it may mean something very different than the traditional, kindergarten public school teacher.

I am presenting here just one way of planning curriculum that I found works and is very enriching for the children.

Aside from the planning around a theme, unit or topic, I also add into my curriculum other activities and skills that we are working on througout the year.

If you have any questions on it of course feel free to comment below.

1- Master Plan

Under my master plan these are the basic curriculum and skills that I would want covered in a given year.

1. Literacy , reading goals and activities
2. Reading readiness goals and activities
3. Math concepts goals and activities
4. Music goals and activities
5. Sciences goals and activities
6. Holidays and specif concepts need to cover

This is very basic and will differ for various ages.

The next step is to branch out from this master plan that will have lots of papers and notebooks and book on.

2- The Unit

The Unit is the topic you are covering for a particular week, month or unknown time period. In the project approach it would be the topic that you have discovered the children are very interested in.

The point of starting from the child’s point of view is that the children will be more interested in topics that come from them. But the concepts are the same in that everything we want children to learn can branch out from any topic or unit.

We don’t compartmentalize knowledge, by saying now we learn math and now science. We incorporate everything under the banner of this unit and learn through that topic. (Except for specific skills)

A unit can be a holiday, a season, a social studies concept

You should NOT base a unit on something like colors or shapes, those are very limited, are very common in traditional classrooms and shapes and colors can be incorporated into any unit. It’s also not exciting to learn about shapes or colors in a vacuum.

3- List of activities for unit

1. Concepts you want to cover in unit
2. Activities and games for circle time to reinforce concepts
3. Visual aids you may need to help with reinforcement
4. Math concepts to tie in to unit
5. Reading and pre reading activities
6. Art activities and projects
7. Science
8. Trips
9. Centers and changes you will make to them based on unit
10. Music and movement

4 -Other activities not related to the unit

• Outdoor, physical games and activities
• Any math, acience, reading or music activites not tied into unit
• New centers for work period
• Individual children that need working with and on what

5- Putting your plans into a chart

I actually find that I need 2 charts for planning. As most of the day in an early childhood classroom follow mostly the same pattern every day you would need charts for circle time, work period and quiet activity time , as those are the blocks of time that need filling in every day.

Circle time and quiet activity time can go on the same chart with days of the week next to them an what you plan on doing in those times on those days.

The next chart would be the one for work period, which is the bulk of the learning time in a progressive Bank Street like classroom.

The classroom is set up with centers depending on whats going on in the unit is what you would put into those centers to facilitate learning.

Some of the centers you may want to have.  (No need to use all, and eve if so, not at the same time.)

• Blocks
• Art
• Dramatic Play
• Manipulatives
• Science and Math center
• Sand/ water
• Library
• Easel
• Computers

A good progressive classroom is always looking to make changes to various centers in the classroom to enrich the unit the children are working on.

In a further post I will give you a sample curriculum.

Integrated curriculum, in this case integrated preschool and kindergarten curriculum ties all subject matter into a cohesive whole. (imitating life I guess)

There are a few ways that this is done.

If you doing the project approach you would begin by listening to the children as they are playing and follow their interests in choosing the topic or theme.

You would then tie all of the subject matter into the theme that you have chosen from the children’ s interests.

If you are following the Emillio Reggio apporaach, art is what is the connecting force of the whole curriculum.

Bank Street College which espouses the developmental approach to learning does it similarly.

Bank Street school usually begins with a social studies concept. The children will go on a trip as simple as going to the fruit and vegetable market. Sometimes  their beginning trip will be a bit more elaborate, but they use a social studies based curriculum and use which is what is most familiar to children. Local studies.

Based on this trip an entire curriculum is woven around it.

If they are doing a market study, after their trip to the market, they will create their own market in school, incorporating reading,writing, math, the arts etc into their market  by planning and creating it.

Math comes into play as they measure for the size of their stalls, buy the food to sell, tally up purchases and figure out what their profit is.

Science : Ass they discover the various fruits and vegetable, what happens to them, what can be done with them, predictions and observations.

Reading:  Making signs for advertising their market, signs for the market itself, reading other books about markets,  writing about the market.

Of course art ties it all together as they create the stands and the posters for their market and draw and paint about their experiences.

The whole curriculum comes alive as they pull their market together and sell fruits and vegetable to the other children in the school.

This is actually the most exciting and relevant way of learning as it brings learning close to home and extremely relevant for children.

When children learn in the traditional manner, where everything is compartmentalized, their learning is separated from life and does not have as much meaning.

Using real life experiences of the children and tying it to learning makes learning very meaningful, fun, exciting and enriching.

An integrated curriculum can start at many different points, however the basis for it, includes ALL skills and subjects into the theme or unit at hand so that the children can integratete their learning into a  whole.

Traditional preschool teachers who believe that education is the imparting of knowledge to their students separate play from real learning. There is play time and then there is learning time. Learning can take place during circle time or by sitting at the tables using workbooks.

An integrated preschool or kindergarten curriculum believes that learning should take place mostly during play time or as what we call it in Bank Street School of Education “Work period”

Firstly the setup of a kindergarten classroom has to be such that it encourages moving from center to center as opposed to all sitting at table in the middle of the classroom

You can actually see a diagram of a kindergarten classroom setup which shows how the classroom is broken up into different corners or areas.

A work period usually needs to take place in a center based classroom. This means that there are various centers set up in different corners or areas of the room where the teacher will make materials available for the children to work with.

When a curriculum is decided the conscientious teacher will tie in all of the areas in the various centers to reflect what they are learning in the classroom.

I am going to talk about 3 of the most common centers in an early childhood classroom and what should be going on in each of them:

Block Area-Should consist of a complete  set of unit blocks with an assortment of wood people and trucks. You can often add signs and other things that pertain to what the kids are studying in class.

The National Association for the Education of Young Children explains in greater detail more of the benefits of block play.

In a nutshell, blocks are extremely helpful for helping the children with beginning math concepts and recreating their world in the concrete. In future post I will be offering suggestions on how to get the most out f the block area.

Housekeeping area- Should be set up with a children’s table and chairs, and lots of housekeeping paraphernalia. After the children have taken visits or trips somewhere you can change over the housekeeping area or the dramatic play area to be that place like a fire station or a fruit market.

Art area- An extremely important place where the children can do all of their preschool crafts for holidays plus all of their creative non process art.

These are only 3 of the many centers you can have. There can be a science table, a math table, a manipulatives center, a computer area, a cooking area etc.

Depending on the space you have and how much you are willing to invest in  learning how to give kids educational activities during their work period will determine how successful your work period can be.

All areas no matter which you choose  should be clearly defined and all items in the areas should have pictures or clear labels of where they belong.

In the art areas there can be pictures or drawings of scissors and crayons, paper etc. so the children can know where the stuff can be returned.

In the block area you can outline a picture of the block size and paste it on the shelf so the kids know where those blocks go.

The fewer items you put out the better off you are. It’s better to add then to take away and too much is overstimulating. You can always take away stuff that is not being used and then bring it back a few months later there will be lots of excitement about the new items.

I will be posting many more interesting and informative things about the various centers and how to get the most out of them.

There are many ways that teachers wet up their classrooms with a great focus put on decorating the classroom walls. Bulletin boards are often done through great collaboration with other teachers and adults. the problem is often that when decorating the early childhood classroom, children are not taken into account.

By this I mean, that if our goal is to educate the children shouldn’t our classroom be decorated FOR the children NOT for the parents.

To that end I have laid out 4 basic ideas that will help you decorate your nursery, kindergarten or early childhood classroom with the children in mind.

1. Uncluttered walls: For some reason many preschool teachers seem to think that in order for their classroom to look cheerful and welcoming, they have to plaster the walls with all kinds of cutesy and supposedly educational signs and pictures. What tends to happen, however is that children tend to tune out when there is too much stimulation and don’t see anything. The trick is to put less up, keep it uncluttered and the children will notice what’s there.
2. Hang low: Why is it that you see ABC’s and other assorted things hanging in early childhood classrooms that are at the top of the room Don’t people realize that the kids are way down on the bottom. If you want the children to see what you hang up…hang it low enough so that they can see what you have prepared for them to see without craning their necks.
3. Hang stuff together with the children: If you can hang the wall hangings together with the children they will be much more involved in what is hung up and will refer back to things more often as they remembered it going up it involves them more.
4. Decorate with children’s artwork:There is nothing that makes a preschool classroom look more cheery than children’s artwork hung on the walls. I know you may want to have things hung up before the children begin school so maybe you can prepare a space that has a beautiful border that says  “Kids work” or something like that and as soon as they make some paintings or drawings,  frame them nicely and hang them up

Remember you want the children involved and everything you do in the classroom should be focused on what the children can gain from it.( Even something simple like the walls of the classroom.)