Website Archive - April
Spotlight on Growing
Watching and encouraging the proper development of young children is much like gardenings. You plant a seed, provide water, sun, and lots of care, and the seed grows into a tall strong plant.
This month’s topic is growing - in nature, in children, in parenting, and in staff development. Growing is a lifetime activity for all of us.
Children
Up To Ten Kids Boowa and Kwala
Click on Boowa and Kwala’s balloon to enter their wonderful world where “down under” accents add a delightful touch to this online oasis of 600+ well-designed animated storybooks, songs, and games for children from 0-6. Although not all topics are about growing, there are quite a few which feature gardens, jungles, and animals. Boowa and Kwala’s Vegetable Patch (under Choices & Decisions) lets kids choose one of three seeds to plant and watch grow. Click on GAMES INDEX to enter this wonderful world of kids’ fun and learning.
Parents
Up To Ten Parents
This site provides practical advice for parents of children using Up to Ten Kids’ Boowa and Kwala. This site uses color-coded icons to indicate which skills each activity helps to develop. It also includes description of activities and advises whether or not an adult needs to work with the child on the activity.
Children grow and learn at their own pace but this site offers some common milestones children may reach, say, do, and understand; how they may interact with others; and how much they may grow through the ages of 4 and 5. Also, provides tips for helping to increase preschoolers’ social abilities.
Creative Curriculum’s How Children Learn in Preschool
This excerpt from A Parent's Guide to Preschool, by Diane Trister Dodge and Joanna Phinney, describes how “children are learning every minute of the day. They learn from the way we organize the classroom, from the daily schedule, from activities, and when they play outdoors.” It explains to parents how each activity in the early childhood classroom engages the preschooler in learning and development.
Center for Disease Control and Preventions Milestones Checklist
Children develop at their own pace, so it’s impossible to tell exactly when yours will learn a given skill. The developmental milestones at this site provide parents with a general idea of the changes expected as children grow older. Select the age of your child and fill out the interactive milestones checklist. It's a great way to record the milestones your child is reaching for a baby book or as a way to share your child's development with the doctor or nurse at the next checkup.
Teachers
Everything Preschools’s Preschool Gardening Theme
This site includes songs, art, booklist, games, science, and an encycopedia all about gardening. The songs don’t include the music so you may have to find a tune that works but the activities are good. Have kids grow their names in grass, grow sprouts in a sponge and plants in clear cups. The site includes a great list of gardening related books, including: The Gigantic Turnip, Whose Garden Is it, Inch By Inch, The Ernormous Potato, or choose from many more wonderful titles. Ask parents and check with your local library to borrow titles you do not own.
Preschool Education Gardening Songs & Fingerplays
Music, song, and fingerplays about flowers and plants will bring spring and the magic of growing into the classroom.
Teacher’s Net: Caterpillar to Butterfly Lesson
A simple classroom activity that starts with reading “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” and ends with a child pretending to be a caterpillar rolled up in a cocoon (brown butcher block paper) and emerging as a beautiful butterfly. Of course, each child has to have their chance to become a butterfly.
Early Childhood.com: Article - Learning Centers Create Exceptional Learning Environments
An appropriately-designed classroom environment can maximize a child’s learning potential as well as provide a foundation for the development of emotional security. Learning centers are effective ways to organize and support young learners.
Per author Carolyn R. Tomlin, “Learning centers help children organize material and classify information. As children return items to the proper place, they learn responsibility and how to care for materials. As children engage in self-selected tasks, teachers may observe the habits of selection, the nature of the activity chosen and the growth of social skills. Good learning centers provide children with time to cultivate ideas, a place to preserve it, and opportunities to share with peers and other adults.”
She goes on to describe how to set up centers or zones in the early childhood classroom, how to determine what materials should be contained in the centers, and suggest how teachers can work together to gather the materials. Ms. Tomlin also provides lists of recommended items for each center.
[Updated on April 26, 2005]
