Whole Child Development
While this time of year is a great opportunity for studying a Food Unit (or jumping right into Winter Weather if you’re getting the kind of storms we’ve been having) it’s also an ideal time to explore transportation. With the holidays coming, many children will either be travelling themselves, or waiting for family members to arrive. It’s a perfect opportunity to make connections between what they’re learning and exploring and what they’re experiencing in their lives.
I feel I need to confess my addiction. I am a bibliomaniac. In spite of the fact that I have a library card, which gives me access to plenty of wonderful books, and which I enjoy using regularly, I still find the need to OWN them. I just love books! It doesn’t help that my husband feels the same way. Who’s going to put on the brakes?
Welcome to the weekend! Here are some things from cyberspace that caught my eye this week…
In recent years, Finland has been consistently at the top of worldwide rankings by nation for 15 year-old academic performance. They’re obviously doing something right. And in my biased informed opinion, if we want to know why their 15 year-olds are so bright, we need to look not only at what they’re doing in high school, but also (and perhaps more so) at what they’re doing in their early education programs.
In recent years, Finland has been consistently at the top of worldwide rankings by nation for 15 year-old academic performance. They’re obviously doing something right. And in my biased informed opinion, if we want to know why their 15 year-olds are so bright, we need to look not only at what they’re doing in high school, but also (and perhaps more so) at what they’re doing in their early education programs.
Whoever coined the phrase “less is more” certainly wasn’t under the age of six. Young children love piling it all on, especially when doing art. It’s more about the experience than the exhibit, and that’s the way it should be.
I’ve been back in the public schools lately, as my oldest son is now a kindergartener. It struck me right away that what I was doing with first graders just seven years ago is now considered kindergarten territory. As was mentioned in the article I linked to previously by Alicia Bayer, “In America, we currently have this idea that our children are struggling academically so the answer lies in pushing them more and more, at earlier and earlier ages… If our children are struggling academically, it does not make sense to make them do more of the same things that are failing them and from a younger age.”
I really do love graphing with preschoolers. It makes math concepts like numeracy, 1-to-1 ratio (counting one number for one item), comparing numbers, and sorting objects very visual and hands-on. Graphing does not have to be complicated. We’re not talking parabolas here, just simple T charts will do.
Just recently I did a sink or float activity (because no matter how many times we do it, my boys still think that 20 pound pumpkins will sink) and I used the back of the door for our graph. Just a door and some painter’s tape. Voila! A graph! [Read more…]
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