Physical
Creative Movement. This type of activity involves the physical involvement of the child in learning. With the help of gestures, facial expressions, and movements, the child shows the word that the teacher quietly told them: so, naming the word out loud is forbidden.
Cooking. For this exercise, the teacher brings several varieties of apples to the class. The child’s task is to describe the taste of the apples and offer ideas for where a particular variety would be better used: in a sour pie, a caramel apple, or in a salad, for example.
Cognitive
Science. In this activity, the children will learn about the way plants get water. Whereas humans have mouths, plants only have roots. Each child is given a test tube of safe food coloring and a white flower with a stem. The child dips the stem into the liquid and waits for the flower bud to color.
Technology. This is a simple exercise in which the child must take a picture of a creature previously molded from plasticine using a classroom tablet. Skills in composition, light work, and subject matter are taken into consideration.
Socioemotional
Dramatic Play. Children, who have their own professional roles, are invited into the pre-prepared environment: policeman, fireman, doctor, teacher, and others. Children play their roles and communicate with each other in the framework of their professions.
Music. The teacher includes five pieces of music from different genres for the children. In turn, the children sketch or try to write down their emotions, impressions, and associations associated with a given piece of music.
It is of fundamental importance when planning a training course to determine the mechanisms that children use to document their own findings and results. First of all, it is worth noting that the activities suggested in the previous section range in variety and in the skills and domains involved. In this regard, using a one-size-fits-all approach to documentation may not be the right strategy because, for example, doing lab activities requires children to be strictly accountable, while playing charades does not. In addition, the physical and cognitive abilities of children should also be taken into account when structuring the school week, as handwritten documentation cannot be expected from three-year-old toddlers. In this regard, several options have been suggested to record their achievements and learning outcomes.
At this age, children are not yet able to read and write poorly, so emphasis should be placed on verbal communication. More specifically, according to numerous studies, a child’s primary foundations for writing and literacy are established at age 3-5, but these skills are still not sufficient for thoughtful, deliberate writing (Dickinson & Morse, 2019; Goodway et al., 2019). The teacher must encourage the child’s attempts to write down his or her discoveries, but any pressure must be avoided in this context. Attempts to force a three-year-old to write or unacceptable humiliation have only a negative effect on developmental speed, which can ultimately lead to delays and emotional dissociation. In particular, in order to get feedback from the student or to encourage reflective analysis, it is enough to ask them to voice their impressions of the lesson or the results achieved (Murray, 2019). For example, at the conclusion of the learning game Apple Season, the student might say aloud which apples are appropriate for pie and which apples are appropriate for salad.
Another method of reporting could be an image that the child creates as a result of going through the game. According to Mcilroy (2019), by the age of three, children have developed sufficient skills and coordination to draw simple elements and combine them into more complex mixtures. Thus, a student at this age can be expected to be able to draw a small picture through which they can reflect their own thoughts or embed a story (Sakr, 2019). This may be appropriate in a task where the child is listening to music and trying to capture their emotions. The drawing associated with each particular song may sufficiently reflect the student’s personal experiences, and being asked to voice the drawing will allow the artistic and cognitive centers of the child’s mind to connect.
If one does not think in terms of individual activities but looks at academic progress throughout the school period, it is essential to mention one effective mechanism for documentation. More specifically, a child may make mini-achievements during the course of school time that will not work effectively if unconnected, incoherently managed. The student must understand the clear and transparent connection between work in individual lessons and overall academic progress (Smith, 2017; Stanishevskaya, 2019). For this reason, the teacher gives the child a sticker for each positive result, which can be affixed to a particular board near the student’s name. In this way, over the course of a board will gradually fill up, and the child will be able to observe their own progress in comparison to other peers.
Weekly Planning Form
Planning Changes to the Environment Date: _________________________________________________
Study / Project:__________________ Age Group: 3-5 y.o.
Planning for Groups
References
Cameron, A. (2020). Early childhood math routines: Empowering young minds to think. Stenhouse Publishers.
Dickinson, D. K., & Morse, A. B. (2019). Connecting through Talk: Nurturing Children’s Development with Language. Brookes Publishing Company.
Goodway, J. D., Ozmun, J. C., & Gallahue, D. L. (2019). Understanding motor development: Infants, children, adolescents, adults. Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Mcilroy, T. (2019). The stages of drawing development in children: 0-6 years. Empowered Parents. Web.
Michelle. (2020). Color changing flower experiment for kids. Taming Little. Web.
Murray, J. (2019). Hearing young children’s voices. International Journal of Early Years Education, 27(1), 1-5. Web.
Sakr, M. (2019). Young children drawing together on the iPad versus paper: How collaborative creativity is shaped by different semiotic resources. International Journal of Education & the Arts, 20(20), 1-27.
Smith, H. (2017). Effects of tracking student growth and success celebrations on high school English learners in science [PDF document].
Stanishevskaya, V. (2019). The importance of student data tracking software in modern education. XBSoftware. Web.
