Teaching spatial awareness is part of most early childhood standards, such as the Head Start Child Development and Early Learning Framework (Understands directionality, order, and position of objects, such as up, down, in front, behind.), and it is part of national standards for K-12 curriculum such as the National Research Council’s A Framework for K-12 [...]
For early childhood teachers professional development can range from first aid to interactive reading to integrating science inquiry with literacy and mathematics learning. We hope we never have to use the first aid training but everything else is a boost to our teaching. This summer I got to participate in a training on science inquiry held [...]
My neighbors just drove off, heading towards the first day of kindergarten for their daughter. I love to see the excitement on children’s faces as they go to “the big school” for the first time. Middle school and high school teachers hope to see that kind of excitement in their students too! On the NSTA [...]
At the end of the school year I gave each preschool student’s family (about 58 of them) a note and a self-addressed stamped envelope in the hopes that they would write to me to let me know about any explorations their child experiences over the summer. Any exploration—deconstructing chalk on the driveway, blowing bubbles on [...]
As I was packing up materials and readying the classrooms for summer storage I reflected back over the year and thought about the next. Developing an on-going inquiry (or overlapping inquiries because more than one class uses the space at this school) is foremost in my mind. I want to find some resources to share [...]
Collecting and analyzing data follows observational steps in science inquiry. To get inspired about expanding your students’ science experiences, read about the data collection by first and second grader teams who are National Elementary School Winners for Grades K-2 of the 2010-2011 Siemens We Can Change the World Challenge!
Spring migration brings additional bird species back to their nesting range and in numbers that children can easily observe. There have been plenty of American Robins pulling up worms from the rain-soaked ground. And the children discovered a Robin’s nest in the shrubby tree on the playground, not under our noses but just above them. Your [...]
Towards the end of the school year we often think of resources we can share with families to use over the summer. I like to describe my favorite outdoor areas to explore with young children with tips for what to take to make the experience last longer (snacks and hats) and be safe (know what [...]
In my neck of the woods we are enjoying a consistently cool Spring with cherry blossoms and daffodils lasting longer than in most years. The sugar snap peas that the children planted in a large pot outside are about 7cm tall and while we’ve seen Cabbage White butterflies around, we haven’t found any eggs on [...]
Children in my preschool love to cook, and in some ways cooking is much like science learning. We feel the ingredients, measure them, follow a procedure to (hopefully) replicate the results of others, and make observations as we mix and apply heat. We get to eat our work, something we do not do in science [...]
