You’ve got to love a little special time with Grandpa!
Articles:
Let Your Kids Get Dirty! {Simple Mom}
How Planning and Reflection Develop Young Children’s Thinking Skills {NAEYC}
5 Ways to Get Your Kids Psyched for Summer Reading {Teach Mama}
Common Core Under Fire: How Strong is Support for New State Standards? {National Education Writers Association} (Still trying to figure out what I think about Common Core. This article links to a lot of arguments on all sides. What resources do you have? I’m trying to get my head around it!)
Activities:
Frozen Vinegar – Cool Summer Science {Inspiration Laboratories}
Homemade Spin Art Machine {Housing a Forest}
Learning in an Instant: Simple Letter Writing Activity {Inner Child Learning}
Simple Summer Crafts: Magic Nuudles {No Time for Flashcards}
Enjoy Your Weekend!
I realize this post is old, however with the start of the school year, Common Core has been on my mind. I am against it because it is just more of the same old, same old testing, standards. It doesn’t address the shift that is needed to make elementary schools a place for children to grow cognitively, socially-emotionally, physically or linguistically.
Children need to be treated as whole human beings and not disembodied minds. There’s a great post on NJC about that 🙂
Education for children is about more than just acquiring skills.
Common Core takes power away from teachers–the people who are in the classrooms with kids.
CC does not address the emotional environment of the classroom or the relationship between the teacher and students.
CC seems more like training and not like learning. NAEYC has a publication (I think it is Building the Primary Classroom) that discusses the difference between training and learning.
The computer adaptive testing has privacy issues that are quite concerning for me. The state I live in spent around $10 million dollars last year hiring a behavioral testing company to write tests. Yikes. That is alot of money that could be spent in the classroom instead. It is also alot of private information that parents do not have control over.
I’m concerned about the motives of the people who paid for CC. I’m concerned that the panel of people paid to develop it did not include anyone with a background in child development or any actual teachers.
There are alot of resources about the CC that I found helpful. One is the book Children of the Core by Kris L. Nielsen.
Thanks for jumping in, Tina! I really have been very curious about CC and haven’t felt like I’ve understood it thoroughly enough to make a formal opinion about it, but the things you’ve mentioned here are certainly among my concerns! I’ll have to look into the book you mentioned. Perhaps that would help!