Music Theme September 10-14, 2012

This week was a little low on theme activities, but that happens sometimes when we get busy with other things or when the kids get into their free play and let me accomplish things around the house.  This week the kids also had a little TV time (they watched Sesame Street if you're interested) when I was doing other things.

Monday:

Morning (during Kindergarten):

• Playground
• Grocery Shopping
• Put Groceries Away
• No time for Theme Activities

Afternoon (after Kindergarten):

• Homework
• French Horn Coloring/F worksheet (L wanted a french horn to color, RJ saved his for another day)
• Lego organization (our new lego drawer set arrived so that took away any time left for theme activities)
• TV time/Free play during dinner prep
• RJ's Gymnastics Class

Tuesday:

Morning (during Kindergarten):

• House Cleaning
• Blowing on recorder on the route to and from K pickup - (L)
• Musical Instrument Exploration during free play (L) - banjo, maracas

Afternoon (after Kindergarten):

• Homework/Coloring
• Big-Kid Co-op at J's for RJ
• House Cleaning, Free Play/Attempted Nap/TV time for L

Wednesday:

Morning (during Kindergarten):

• L Gymnastics Class
• L Play Date

Afternoon (after Kindergarten)

• Homework
• Chores
• TV-time
• Free Play

Thursday:

Morning (during Kindergarten)

• Hosted Little Kid Co-op

• Instruments out on the table for exploration
• Toilet paper rain sticks with beans - Kids poured beans and then decorated with paint.
• Note: Beans turned out to be a great sensory experience as well as a great mess all over the floor!  They loved shaking their rain sticks too!
• Musical Ice in Water Table (from: http://playathomemom3.blogspot.com/2011/06/musical-salt.html )

• Note: this didn't really make much music unless a massive amount of salt was poured on all at once.  However, the children did enjoy a wonderful sensory experience with the ice and salt and water as it melted

Afternoon (after Kindergarten)

• Homework
• Chores
• Read
• TV time
• RJ made his rain stick on his own during Free Play

Friday:

Morning

• L and I played "drums" on recycled pirouette cookie tins with pencils
• Concepts: rhythm  He repeated some simple patterns (1, cross; 1, 2, cross; 1, 2, 3, cross)
• Played with the felt board notes
• Concepts:
• whole note, half note, quarter note, eighth note, sixteenth note,
• I showed him that the notes translated to sounds on the recorder, labeled the notes with the letters

Afternoon

• Homework/Coloring (brief since we mostly finished it!), also music worksheets from last week (RJ also wrote the names of the instruments by request)
• Chores
• TV time/make dinner time
• Swim lessons

Fun Musical Lunches this week:

French Horn Tortilla

Tuna Salad Sushi Roll Oboe

Web Sites for future reference:
http://www.classicsforkids.com/games/
http://www.sfskids.org/templates/home.asp?pageid=1
http://pbskids.org/music/
http://www.teachingideas.co.uk/music/notevaluechants.htm

Kindergarten Homework Critique #1

RJ's elementary school career started recently and while I am trying to keep an open mind, I am disheartened by how his Kindergarten teacher does not utilize developmentally appropriate practice, at least when it comes to homework.  I cannot attest to what happens all day in the room, since I have not had my turn to volunteer yet, however, if the work he brings home is any indication, I am not impressed.  You can feel free to disagree with me, as these are my opinions and I encourage debate (although try to refrain from the "I did these and I learned just fine" arguments.  That's not the point.  The point is to get children interested in learning and the kids who aren't "doing just fine" are the ones that need these changes the most.  And even the children who are "doing just fine" deserve to be challenged more, in appropriate and interesting ways.  Much like how we want to help children who are struggling to improve, we also don't want children who learn quickly and easily to become stagnated, bored, or for them to become lazy because school is easy for them. )  I simply feel that there is considerable room for improvement that would leave kids more engaged and interested in learning the skills necessary to be successful in school.

When RJ came home with his first homework packet last week, I got inspiration to start critiquing it.  I'm not naming his school or his teacher, but I am presenting his homework here for you to see.  As the nature of homework is to have the children turn in a tangible product, I understand that pencil and paper activities are necessary.  I also realize that pencil and paper activities do have some value considering the goal of developing good penmanship in Kindergarten.  However, I also know that there are ways of achieving these goals without utilizing a litany of rote practice worksheets (which our recycling bin will quickly fill up with).  My biggest criticism, which is as much for the district, who chooses the curriculum standards and system, as it is for the teacher herself, is that these worksheets lacked any context for the children.  They're boring.  I've been out of kindergarten for a long time and while it would've taken me about 30 seconds to finish some of these, I wouldn't want to spend even that much time doing them.  I can't imagine how one would convince an unwilling child to do these sheets without some sort of major coercion (which would be bad, because coercion doesn't lead to a love of learning!)

So, as a resource to kindergarten teachers everywhere, I am examining RJ's homework and explaining why it is problematic and then, where possible, providing easy ways to improve the assignments.

The first page in RJ's homework was the Mary Had a Little Lamb Matching Page.

The first thing that came to my mind as I saw this was, "wow.  lame".  This wasn't because recognizing similarities and differences aren't important, but rather because it was too easy and lacked any sort of real context to make it interesting.  

This really lacked any sort of real-world importance.  Why did they need to be matched up?  Where would we have to do this in real life?

Having a real-world example would not only enable children to use their observation skills to recognize minute differences between objects and match the similarities, but would also teach them something valuable about the world.

This is where I think thematic curriculum would be the most helpful, because themes can provide a context for the so-called academic skills that administrators and teachers alike deem important.
Since in my house, we're studying music right now, I immediately thought about having a worksheet where there were several orchestra instruments (of which there were two pairs with small differences for each instrument).  Students would color and cut out the musicians with their instruments and paste them onto another sheet, arranging them into their like pairs and placing them where they belonged in the orchestra seating chart.  There are several reasons why I think this activity would be better than this simple lamb matching one.  First, coloring and cutting are great fine motor activities that most children inherently enjoy.  So in addition to matching, which is the main goal, you're also working on fine motor control, which is necessary for good penmanship.  Second, arranging the musicians by their instruments is something that would happen in real life, so it makes sense to do so.  And finally, children can learn something more than just matching by learning about orchestras and why the instruments are arranged the way they are.

Next, was the Color Recognition Page.

I actually thought this page was a good one.  It was open-ended and allowed the child to be active and search his/her environment, which is very developmentally appropriate.  RJ enjoyed this one, too.  Also, while the directions said to record RJ's answers for him, I took it upon myself to use the opportunity for writing practice as well, since taking notes on one's observations is a real-life science skill.  I did write some of the longer words since the lines weren't really meant for a developmentally appropriate writing size, but the line size would honestly be my only criticism, and learning to write to the size of the line is something children will eventually have to do in their lives anyway.

I like when writing practice involves writing relevant words rather than focusing on one letter at a time (which his worksheets from school essentially are).    Kids want to communicate, but that's difficult to do when they're focusing on only one letter at a time.  When RJ wanted to start writing (he was about 3 1/2), it was because he wanted to communicate with his daddy - we started by writing out a menu of what we were eating for dinner so that my husband (who has a late commute and eats after the kids and I) would know what was for dinner.  I taught him how to write the letters as we needed them to write the words and he was engaged by the process.

Classifying by Color

Kids like coloring, so this was better than circling objects that can be that color, but I'm still not impressed here. This was another case where RJ zipped through the assignment because he was largely trying to just be done with it.  It was too easy for him.  L (at age 2.5) could tell me which objects could be which color.  I get that not all children have the same background as mine and I do want them to have the opportunity to catch up to where they need to be for kindergarten, however, I do believe there are better ways to do this.  For example, why not let kids be creative?  You don't need a fancy worksheet!!!  Just give the instructions to draw and color one thing of each color (and include all the colors of the rainbow, not just two primary colors and two blends).




Circles

This is exactly what I see as wrong about our educational system and the awful curriculum systems that we have in our schools.  This clearly comes from some uninspired workbook.

Imagine for a moment that you are a 5 year old kid.  On what planet would you want to draw 16 circles and 3 spirals for no apparent reason??  And why wouldn't you rush through it just to be done?  Yeah, RJ's circles aren't perfect here; he crossed or missed the lines, but this activity was so bad, that I didn't have the heart to make him erase and re do it either.   We can practice circles in a more developmentally appropriate way on our own.  I want to keep this critique civil and informative, but this sheet just incites a bit of a rant in me, so I will shout a little and then get back to the critique:  BORING BORING BORING BORING!!!!!!!

Sure, curriculum companies and teachers and district administrators, I understand that you want my kid to have good fine motor control and be able to draw shapes and letters and numbers with accuracy.  I agree, these skills are important.  However, giving sheets like this ad nauseum is one way to ensure that a child who isn't strong on fine motor control will never want to practice his/her skills.

To kindergarten teachers everywhere, I realize that not all of this is your fault.  Your districts mandate your use of various curriculums and the pacing of such curriculum.  You're sort of stuck.  However, last I checked, there was no one telling you that you needed to give out this worksheet.  Yes, you need to get my kid to make decent circles, ideally starting and stopping at the correct points and staying within the boundaries of the lines.  However, at the very least, could you please provide the child with some sort of reason for doing this?  Can you make it into a game of some sort?  One idea I had was to have them pretend that they're making rings for a  ring toss game that have to be perfectly round (and concentric) and correctly sized to work well.  You could even have them cut them out and try them out using a pencil stuck in play doh as the ring toss target. Practicing by independently drawing objects that require circle shapes would work too. Or, eschew the pencil/paper tasks all together and have them practice making circles with paint on easels or using an unsharpened pencil in salt or sand or mud.  Any of these would be better.  Looking at the spirals, I thought that even having some sort of labyrinth style maze that they had to go through with their pencil (with some story of why provided) would be more interesting for them than this sort of rote activity.

Number Verses

These are basically just instructions that are said in a sing-songy kind of voice.  I like the idea of using music to learn, but having just a worksheet for these is inappropriate.  I think this is better used as a teacher reference for a classroom activity where the teacher and children sing the words and practice writing the numbers in sand/salt trays or on mini chalkboards/magna doodles or something.  Then again, I don't even think THAT is much better.

My main criticism of all of this is that there is zero context for learning these skills and they're all presented in isolation.  Kindergarteners should be learning science and social studies in addition to learning how to write letters and numbers, right?  Why can't their writing practice be within the context of a science activity?  They could plant seeds and record how tall the seedlings are every day using a ruler.  They could measure each other's height, arm span, etc. and record those numbers.  They could play grocery store and have to write out the price of things on a "receipt" and add them too!   There are so many better ways to incorporate writing practice into meaningful activities.  They don't need to be able to practice writing numbers perfectly in a rote setting before they can do interesting things with the skill!

RJ's homework did end on a positive note though.  One of the activities in RJ's homework was the Alphabet Card Activities, which was more of a game that involved him manipulating the cards in various ways.

I liked that the activities suggested were on multiple levels, starting with just seeing which letters the child knew (RJ knew them all, except he floundered a little with lowercase q, but he quickly showed after that fact that he knew that one as well) and leading up to identifying vowels and consonants.  One thing that I saw as missing from the list was to name things that start with each letter.  This could also be used with thematic curriculum as you could name animals starting with each letter, or pick the letters that start each planet or find the letters that start various musical instruments.  The possibilities really are endless when you have an engaged child.  I also wonder if adding a story could help a non-engaged child to participate.  I could see some sort of riddle scavenger hunt for letters around the room being fun.    RJ didn't seem to need any additional prompting as he was more than happy to just arrange the letters and match the upper and lower case letters and name things starting with them (actually when he was matching the upper and lower case, he did this all on his own, so we went with it).  My only major criticism is the "Alphabet Slap Game"  because I really don't see why slapping is AT ALL necessary, but that's just my general stance on non-violence coming through.

I hope you find this critique helpful and that some of you kindergarten teachers out there on the internet can use some of these ideas effectively.

Music Theme: September 4-7, 2012

I haven't written about themes in a while, but now that preschool is over and kindergarten has started for RJ, and our schedule is becoming regular again, it was time to start fresh.  This time, I'm doing a plan by day approach to get going and will post about the theme after the fact, instead of before.  For reference, RJ is now 5 and in AM Kindergarten while L is 2.5 and home with me during the day.

The theme now is: MUSIC

Tuesday: 
Morning (during Kindergarten):

• L and I went to the library to find some books about music
• We cleaned the living room and the floors throughout the first floor

Afternoon (after Kindergarten):

• L napping
• Initial Assessment of Music Knowledge about Music for RJ
• Questions:
• What is Music?
• How can you make Music?
• Prompt: What other ways can you make Music?
• What kinds of musical instruments do you know about?
• What can you tell me about them?
• What can you do with Music?
• Can you tell me about rhythm (prompt with what is rhythm, if necessary), pitch, timbre?

Afternoon Co-op

• Read Zin, Zin, Zin, A Violin (Moss, 2000) and listened to each instrument from the book in turn on (L asleep for this) http://www.dsokids.com/listen/instrumentlist.aspx
• Sidewalk chalk paint with feet while dancing to classical music (L asleep for this)

• Water Glass Xylophone 
• Concepts: Different levels of water vibrate differently to make different sounds.  Sound comes from vibrations.  High vs. Low pitch.  high pitch = less water; low pitch = more water

Wednesday:
Morning (during Kindergarten)

• Initial Assessment of Music Knowledge for L
• Read Zin Zin Zin to L with the instrument listening activity (he was asleep during it yesterday)

Afternoon (after Kindergarten)

• Cut Musical Staff and Notes out of felt 
• Concepts: the staff has 5 lines upon which we put music notes on or between them and above and below them.  There are different kinds of notes.  We'll cover more concepts as we play with these.

Thursday:
Morning (RJ at Kindergarten, L at Little Kid Co-op)
Afternoon (after Kindergarten)

• Homework time guitar and drum coloring sheets for L (while RJ did his school homework)
• Concepts: Drum and Guitar image recognition 
• Note: I usually do not endorse worksheets/coloring sheets, but RJ has been asking for a guitar coloring page and I wanted something "homework like" so that L wouldn't feel left out when RJ was doing his Kindergarten homework packet.

   

Friday:

Morning (during Kindergarten)

• Read: Out and About at the Orchestra (Turner, 2003)
• Concepts:
• tickets list a row and seat number to help you find your seat
• Music travels through the air in invisible sound waves, bounce off walls and ceiling
• musicians sit in a half circle to make sounds blend and to hear each other better
• String instruments played with bows or plucked
• bows are made from horse tails
• bow makes the strings vibrate, making sounds
• smaller instruments sound higher; larger instruments sound lower and deeper
• woodwind instrument  = long and tube like, played by blowing through it
• high sounds = shorter instruments
• low sounds = longer instruments
• reed is a piece of cane (stiff plant like bamboo) fitted in the mouthpiece; it vibrates and makes sound when musician blows through it
• brass instruments can be muted by putting something into the bell
• brass instruments and woodwinds have keys or buttons that when pressed change the distance the air has to travel, changing the sound; farther the air goes = lower the sound
• percussion played by hitting or shaking
• percussion instruments come from all over the world (e.g., Chinese gongs, Turkish cymbals, Cuban bongos, Spanish maracas and castanets, African drums, steel drums from West Indies)
• Conductor = leader of orchestra
• conductor counts beats and keeps musicians playing together, tells them when to go faster, slower, louder, softer
• conductors score is long and has all the parts
• musicians are busy and practice every day
• Played instrument sounds for French horn, trumpet, tuba by request

Afternoon (after Kindergarten)

• Re-read Out and About at the Orchestra (Turner, 2003) 
• Played instrument sounds for French horn, trumpet, tuba, tympani drums
• Read: pages 2-5, The Usborne Story of Music (O'Brien, 1997)  
• Concepts:
• Music in Ancient Times
• people started making music from the beginning of time, probably by hitting things and singing and clapping
• early instruments have been found
• Egypt
• dancers and flute players accompanied work and entertained
• important at religious ceremonies
• gods and goddesses often pictured playing instruments
• Greek Music
• thought it was the invention of the gods
• wind instrument = aulos
• stringed instrument = kithara
• festivals involved singing and dancing and costumes
• Roman music
• concerts for wealthy
• plays set to music
• musicians were often slaves
• rich people played, but not in public, wasn't dignified
• performing happened on the street too with jugglers and acrobats
• Medieval Music
• Music played part in Christian religion
• Simple melodies = plainsong or plainchant, Gregorian chant is an example
• usually sang by choir, sometimes had instruments
• New Style
• polyphony - two lines to be sung together
• Writing music down
• started with marks over the words
• then marks were placed on lines
• Minstrels
• music used for entertainment
• minstrels went from place to place singing, playing, juggling, acrobatics
• some noblemen became poets/composers = troubadours/trouveres/minnesinger, performed for kings and wealthy, usually love songs
• Instruments: wind: shawms, horns, lute, harp, fiddle, hurdy gurdy

This week RJ also had music themed bento lunches that he took to school:

Hard Boiled Egg Guitars

Tortilla Ham Roll Flute

Sushi Rice and Nori Piano

And this week's bread had a music note in it.

Our Art Environment Reorganization

I am constantly trying to maximize the usability of the kids' environments, whether it is rearranging furniture and toys in the living room, moving toys back and forth between the living room and family room, or simply reorganizing where the toys go.  After Christmas, we got a toy shelf for my older son's room, moved some of his more advanced toys up there, and resorted the toys downstairs.  I had reservations about putting toys in his room, but we were over crowded and under-organized downstairs. I also added picture/word labels to the bins and boxes so that it was clear what went where.  So far, this reorganization worked pretty well, but my biggest issue wasn't solved because my biggest issue was the case of the exploding art supplies.

My husband thought that I needed to just put all the art supplies somewhere else, like in a closet or the laundry room or something, but I argued that I wanted them accessible so that we could do art at a moment's notice, when inspiration hit.  We settled on an annex for some of the art supplies and recycling materials that I was saving "just in case".  So, now there is an exploding shelving unit in the laundry room, which still isn't ideal, but did help with the living room clutter.  There was also the issue that our common art supplies (markers, crayons, scissors, etc.) were in assorted containers on top of my sewing cabinet and they needed to be moved every time I wanted to sew, and of course this would mean that the art supplies were displaced for a week or so when I was working on a sewing project.

Then it dawned on me that since we started eating in the dining room rather than the kitchen, we weren't using the kitchen table for anything (except a catchall for random crap).  And the kids' easel was attached to our learning tower (which lived in the kitchen), and there was the sliding glass door for another painting/window crayon area.  Another bonus was that I just moved the kid's play kitchen set into the kitchen behind the island (where the kitchen table is), so if my younger son got bored with a project, he could play there until my older son was finished.

So after finding some inspiration from various preschool settings and the Play At Home Mom website, I bought some inexpensive planters and a paper sorter from Target and attached them to the wall next to the kitchen bookshelf and cart, cleared a spot for the art basket in the bookshelf, and pooled all the crayons and sorted by color in baby food jars, which I put in a shoebox for easy moving.  I also moved the coca-cola cooler that housed art supplies into the area.

 So, now the kids have easy access to their markers, crayons, and paper, AND the paintbrushes and paint are now near the easel.

So far, they love being able to grab their own paper and draw whenever they want.

However, the one drawback is that paint is more accessible, which leads to more mess...but it IS a ton of fun.

For a quick rundown of what we have available:
Left planter - paintbrushes of all shapes and sizes
Right planter - markers
Paper holder - paper of various colors, stencils
Animal Crackers container on floor - washable paint (there is another animal crackers container in the laundry room with acrylic paints)
Basket on Shelf - tape dispenser, scissors, dinosaur stamp set, box of window crayons and markers, pencils, glue bottles, colored sand in baby food jars, roll of easel paper
Coke Cooler in front of kitchen cart - various supplies such as feathers, yarn pieces, pipe cleaners, googly eyes, magnet strips, newspaper
Easel - paint pots, container of chalk
Table - shoe box of crayons sorted by color in baby food jars, some separate type crayons
Shelves in laundry room - boxes, baby food jars, yogurt cups (great for holding glue or paint), acrylic paints, paper plates, art flour, art salt, art cornstarch, sand, bulk glue for refills, etc.

We've been doing a lot of Outer Space things recently.  One day we were reading a book about Saturn (because seriously, what kid's favorite planet WASN'T Saturn?).  In the book (Exploring Saturn; Bartolotti, 2003), there was a section that mentioned that Saturn is the size of approximately 760 Earths.  This book is clearly for older kids (like 4th or 5th grade) and had a LOT of information in it, but my 4.75 year old insisted on getting it from the library and insisted on reading it, so I did a lot of paraphrasing and skipping stuff that was too abstract.  But this particular piece of information seemed to stick with him and he of course wanted to do a project about it.  We together brainstormed what we could do, but it had to wait for another day, because clearly this project was not going to work with my two year old and his two year old friend hanging around.

First, we counted out 760 pinto beans (now you see why having the two-year-olds around was not going to work).  We did it by making 76 piles of 10, and then I showed him how we can count by 10's.  He caught on and joined in the counting.  There is no reason why it had to be pinto beans.  They just happened to be the oldest beans in the back of the cupboard and weren't organic (we were not going to waste the more expensive organic beans).

I also had him write out 1 = Earth,  760 = Saturn.  It was good writing practice and he was willing, so we went with it!

Then for the fun part.  While you can see from our display of beans how much more 760 is from 1, it doesn't quite translate to the size of the planets.  So we got a balloon and filled it with 760 beans.  This is not an easy task.  I ended up using the adapter cylinder from the Kleen Kanteen sippy cup to hold the opening of the balloon open, and had to keep blowing it up a little to make the beans settle to add more [A funnel would probably work better, but we don't have one.].  But finally, all the 760 beans were in and we tied off the balloon and added a pipe cleaner (because Saturn needed rings!).

I would also recommend double bagging Saturn, since ours had an unfortunate accident resulting in needing to fill a second balloon.  I double bagged Saturn after that and did a better job making sure the pipe cleaner wasn't poking it, and it's thankfully remained intact for a few weeks now.  It even survived a trip to preschool for share day, where he further impressed his teacher by explaining the whole thing AND added that Mars was the size of half of Earth, which meant it was half a bean.

I LOVE what hands on learning can do.  He really understands the size difference now, and is noting size differences everywhere now.  And this is an early intro to fractions as well with the concept of "half".

Impromtu Activity that Worked: Menus for Daddy

In addition to our theme activities, I've also tried to encourage more writing and literacy, both through modeling, creating a literacy rich environment, and promoting organic writing experiences.

In addition to labeling all of our bins containing toys, and signing his name to Valentines, this past week, when singing "pasta starts with p, pasta starts with p, puh puh puh puh puh puh puh, pasta starts with p" during dinner. It dawned on me that we could be writing too. And since my husband has a long commute and doesn't get home until the kids' bedtime, RJ was excited to write him a menu so he knew what to reheat for dinner.

Pictured is our second menu for Daddy. I plan on keeping this in our routine as long as RJ is engaged with it, because it's great writing/phonics practice and it actually keeps him eating bites between letters (since we actually write at the dinner table). While doing this we also sing the "___ starts with __" song for each food, which keeps the baby happy (and learning words for his food) too.

Theoretical Thursday: My Philosophy Statement

I've meant to write this for a while and as I am back on the job market, I wanted to have a comprehensive written document that describes my personal philosophy of Early Childhood Education. So here it is:

When I look at young children I see inordinate amounts of potential. I enjoy watching children think and believe that they are capable of forming complex ideas, testing out those ideas, and reflecting on them. It is our responsibility as educators and parents to nurture children’s learning in all domains; or “teaching to the whole child” using the current vernacular for Developmentally Appropriate Practice. As a contemporary educator, using developmentally appropriate practices promoted by the NAEYC such as hands-on, meaningful activities, play-based learning, positive guidance, providing routines that give children the opportunity to make choices, recognizing individual differences, promoting each child’s diverse background, and basing early educational experiences within a model of relationship-based care should be second nature, as they are commonalities between most of the existing approaches and frameworks for Early Childhood Education. 

Early Childhood Education has several goals that can be summarized simply; to promote optimal development of the whole child, cognitively, socially, and physically, and to instill a love for learning that will serve the child through the elementary years and beyond. These early experiences are important.
While there are many approaches to choose from, an eclectic approach focusing on the creation of thematic units has the most promise for exceeding the goals of Early Childhood Education by not only promoting optimal general development and instilling a love for learning, but also growing the knowledge base of children so that they can have even greater knowledge gains later on and recognize that multiple domains and skills are important for learning concepts, regardless of the theme. A multitude of evidence from research on cognitive development indicates that children (and adults) learn more about a particular topic when they have more existing knowledge to build on (Siegler, 2004). Carver (2001) believes that there are five meta-principles from cognitive psychology which influence learning such content knowledge; building on prior knowledge, making thinking explicit, emphasizing links, providing practice opportunities, and expecting individual variability. These meta-principles reflect principles from sociocultural, constructivist, and multiple intelligences theory. When teachers use thematic units, constructivist practices embedded within, such as providing authentic materials to promote active engagement, allow for individual variability, allow children to build on their own prior knowledge, as well as providing practice opportunities. Furthermore, when children are working in such hands-on ways, the teachers have created opportunities to facilitate children’s questioning, testing, exploring, and reflecting. Teachers can scaffold children toward making connections to prior experiences, set up the environment to pique curiosity, and engage children in active reflection about the experience, thus making thinking explicit. While teachers are ultimately responsible for planning a balance of child-initiated authentic experiences and teacher-directed activities, it is important for the themes themselves to stem from the children’s interests (even if a teacher piques that interest) and inquiries in the classroom. When they do, the children are engaged in their learning and also feel like they are empowered in making contributions (based on their existing knowledge) as well as having some control over what they are learning. I consider thematic units to be semi-emergent since the children’s interest drives the themes, but teachers guide the progression of the theme along with the children. I believe that children must feel connected to the theme and want to learn about it, but that teachers should play a role in gently guiding their exploration toward a logical progression of concepts that build on each other.

I like using thematic units because they create an excellent framework for engaging children in multidisciplinary activities that allow for collaborative, extended, projects from day to day that not only engage learning in a number of different ways, but also contribute to an organized body of knowledge.

Thematic units are rooted in the Project Approach, where children’s experiences progress through a structured system where, over time, they assess what they know and plan their project, and lastly, determine how to share what they learned. Teachers utilizing thematic units also use ample concept webbing, and might use the know-want-how-what charting to determine the course of the theme, adding their own elements to round out the theme as well. Using themes leads to children building a knowledge base as well as asking more questions, thus furthering the theme investigation. In this way, children truly develop a love of learning from an engaging thematic unit. When teaching using thematic units, teachers can also use the plan-do-review method popularized by the High/Scope method to promote the children’s autonomy and purposefulness in choosing, implementing, and reflecting on the activities, thus making their thinking explicit.
When themes are based on children’s world, they also lend themselves perfectly to open discourse about all children’s experiences, mediating a sense of openness and acceptance for all children and their families, who are often engaged and involved with the interesting themes.

In sum, I believe that thematic units create the perfect framework for children to learn important skills within a play-based model while increasing their knowledge of the world around them, and develop curiosity and love for learning.