Celebrate NAEYC’s 2016 Week of the Young Child™! Guest Post by Rhian Evans Allvin

Posted on April 11, 2016 by Cynthia Raso

NAECY1

A special guest post by Rhian Evans Allvin, Executive Director of the National Education for the Education of Young Children

Every year, NAEYC’s Week of the Young Child™ brings together thousands of young children, educators, and families from around the globe in celebration of our youngest learners. WOYC™ is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the joy and play that are at the heart of early learning.

During this year’s Week of the Young Child™, April 10—16, parents and teachers are encouraged to explore developmentally-appropriate activities based around five fun daily themes: Music Monday, Taco Tuesday, Work Together Wednesday, Artsy Thursday, and Family Friday. These suggested themes offer activity ideas supporting early math, language, literacy, and more, while promoting social-emotional development with diverse hands-on learning opportunities.

For this year’s WOYC™, NAEYC invites everyone to get involved in the celebration! Make up a fun dance routine to our 2016 featured song, “One Love” as performed by Aaron Nigel Smith and the One World Chorus on Music Monday, or invite children to help measure ingredients on Taco Tuesday. Work Together to explore the world around you on Wednesday, create imaginative works of art on Artsy Thursday, and celebrate your unique family on Family Friday!

The Week of the Young Child™ is also a great opportunity to thank early educators for their hard work and dedication to the early learning profession. Research tells us that US voters overwhelmingly believe that early educators play an essential role within our communities—nearly on par with firefighters and nurses. These same voters recognize that early childhood educators have complex and demanding jobs and responsibilities, and that our national policies do not reflect the vast amount of developmental science supporting the importance of high-quality early learning experiences during a child’s most formative years. No matter how you celebrate WOYC™ this year, be sure to thank the early educators in your life, and the family members who help encourage learning at home.

As an NAEYC-accredited program, the Smithsonian Early Enrichment Center has proven to maintain high-quality early learning standards and offers quality learning experiences to its students and community. NAEYC is excited to see the fun activities and learning experiences that will be taking place this year! Teachers and families are encouraged to share their WOYC™-inspired activities by sharing photos, activity ideas, videos and more to NAEYC’s Facebook or Twitter using #woyc16, or sending directly to woyc@naeyc.org. We can’t wait to see how you celebrate the early learners in your life!

To learn more about NAEYC’s Week of the Young Child™ visit naeyc.org/woyc. To get involved in the conversation about supporting and elevating the early education profession through our nation’s public policy, join NAEYC’s Early Ed for President movement at earlyedforpresident.org.

The Art Room

Posted on March 1, 2016 by Cynthia Raso

We recently featured our art educator, Carolyn Eby, in our bi-weekly Teacher Feature. We thought it would be great to take another look at the work she is doing with all of our age groups. Check out some of her great ideas!

Infants Explore the Arctic

Carolyn used frozen paints and invited each child to mix them with other colors on their tables. After which, she took a mono print of their work. Children later ripped the mono print to create a collage – a fun activity that also helped them build important fine motor skills!

Toddlers Sand Paint

This sand paint, made with puffy paint and baking soda, was delivered straight to the toddler class in dump trucks — the perfect accompaniment to their study of, you guessed it, trucks!

PreK-3 Color Mixing

Our preschool students join Carolyn every afternoon for art. Here we see them exploring color with the help of a light table. They also used eyedroppers and watercolors to explore what happened when the colors ran together. So focused!

PreK-4 Shapes

Like the three-year-olds, the fours join Carolyn every afternoon. Here she took a common theme, shapes, and added depth. On the floor, the students are participating in a drawing game in which the dice indicate a color and a shape. Then, she had the class paint with sponges cut into specific shapes. Finally, she has them cutting shapes to match an artwork. They approached the concept in a variety of ways and thus, got a deeper understanding of it and had a lot of fun!

A Fresh Take: Back-to-School Books

Posted on September 3, 2015 by Cynthia Raso

It’s that time again! Many of our nation’s teachers are preparing their classrooms for the first day of school and so we wanted to share with you what some of our SEEC teachers are planning to include on their bookshelves this coming fall. Before school ended this past week, I interviewed several of our teachers to get their perspective on back-to-school books and here’s what I learned.

HOMEMADE BOOKS

Many of our infant and toddler teachers lamented that there weren’t a lot of options for their young students. They were opting for making homemade books like the one featured to the right that documents a trip to their new classroom. This group of toddlers will be going to a new center, so the teacher thought it was especially important to have something to ease into a new location. I liked that the book highlighted the children’s feelings and pointed out some exciting new components of the classroom. I guess you could call it an end-of-the-year book, but since it will be with them in their new classroom too it still bridges their experiences and offers them continuity.

Many of our teachers also like to create individual books for their students that include photos of family, special events or things the child likes. These types of books can be a great source of comfort at any time of the year when they need a little extra soothing. They also help classmates learn about each other.

FAMILIAR FRIENDS

At least four teachers said to me that they weren’t necessarily looking for back-to-school books for September. Rather they wanted books with which the children were familiar. Having these books were important because they built in a familiar component that would help their students feel safe and more easily transition to their new teachers and routines. This was especially true of the teachers in our toddler and twos classes. Here were some of their top recommendations.

Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom by Bill Martin, Jr. and John Archambault
Good Night Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See by Bill Martin Jr.
The Napping House by Audrey Wood
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

MAKE IT A PROJECT

Our current Kindergarten teacher shared that when she was teaching in Europe she stumbled across the book, Mommy in My Pocket by Carol Hunt Sendarak. She said she fell in love with the book and its story of a little girl who imagines shrinking her mother so she can accompany her to school. In the end, she realizes that she will be fine on her own as she carries the memory of her mother’s hug and kiss.

Our teacher, Cathryn, took the book a step further and had her students bring in a photo of their moms/caretakers and adhered it to the shape of a person. The children were invited to “dress” the body by coloring in clothes. When they were finished, she attached it to a heart, which was then glued on top of a cut-out pocket shape. Finally, she attached yarn to the pocket so the children could wear their “caretaker pockets” like a necklace.

After their project was done, the class sat together and talked. She recounts that she would ask about their feelings or other objects that they might want to bring to school with them.

CELEBRATING INDIVIDUALITY

Many of our PreK teachers said they like to use the beginning of the year to teach about what makes their students special or unique. One PreK-4 teacher praised Tacky the Penguin by Helen Lester for not only honoring everyone’s differences, but also just being silly. Another teacher suggested Ian Falconer’s Olivia because of how it embraces the character’s unique spirit – plus, it doesn’t hurt that the book showcases a visit to the museum where Olivia encounters paintings by Degas and Pollock – a very SEEC moment.

OTHER FAVORITES

Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse by David Henkes

Though not really about back-to-school, this book features the relationship between student and teacher and introduces children to the concept of having different perspectives.

2. The Night Before Kindergarten by Natasha Wing

This one is for the parents out there! It is a personal favorite that helped both my children transition to Kindergarten.

2. Splat the Cat by Rob Scotton

3. If You Take a Mouse to School by Laura Numeroff

4. Franklin Goes to School by Paulette Bourgeois

DON’T FORGET THE SPACE

Creating a cozy corner, can be as important as the books. Have fun creating a space that is quiet by sectioning it off from the classroom buzz. Use inviting colors, comfortable furniture and include soft, soothing objects. Such a space will undoubtedly help with those first day transitions as well as difficult moments throughout the year.

Hope these give you some fresh ideas! Happy back-to-school.

Teacher Feature: Three Year Old Classroom Explores Gardening

Posted on May 28, 2015 by francisag

It’s Teacher Feature Thursday!

This week we are featuring Erin Pruckno. Her three year old classroom was learning about Eric Carle and Erin decided to spend a week focusing on The Tiny Seed. Below you will find a reflection from Erin and images from her lesson.

What were your topics of exploration?

In this unit, we were using the books of Eric Carle to engage with a variety of topics that our class wanted to explore, topics like animals, food, rainbows, and more. This particular lesson was from our week on plants, using The Tiny Seed to guide us. We focused on the parts of a plant, the plant life cycle, what plants need to grow, and in this lesson, how we garden to care for plants.

What were your learning objectives? (What did you want your children to take away from the lesson?)

One of my objectives for this lesson was for the students to develop a sense of their role in tending plants—many of them are interested in the plants on our playground, so I wanted to encourage their sense of responsibility in caring for the natural environment. I also wanted to foster their language development by introducing new vocabulary for the different tools we use to garden, which would also add new elements to their dramatic play. Finally, we used the lesson as an opportunity to organically build letter recognition and phonemic awareness as we named and labeled the different tools.

What was most successful about your lesson?

My students really enjoyed picking out and adding tools to our poster of “Gus the Gardener.” Making it into a game by telling them to close their eyes and pick is always a hit too! I also think that the lesson was successful in encouraging my class to think about the sounds associated with letters as they matched a label with text to the corresponding image of a gardening tool. They also were quick to pick up on the new vocabulary, using the words for tools they previously didn’t know as they played with them on the playground later that day!

What could you have done differently? What recommendations would you have for another teacher trying out this lesson?

The fun part of this lesson is that it doesn’t have to just be about gardening! I’ve also used a similar format to introduce the job of a paleontologist and all the tools he or she needs to dig. It could also work for exploring other occupations, like doctors or builders. During the museum portion of our visit, we were very lucky that there were two paintings side-by-side that allowed us to compare and contrast gardening indoors versus outdoors. Another teacher could accomplish the same thing by bringing in an image of a different kind of garden in another painting, or by comparing and contrasting two different photos or prints if they can’t make it to a museum. Visiting indoor and outdoor gardens would be another opportunity for making comparisons about the kinds of gardening and the tools we need.

Here are a few images from their unit on gardening:Erin’s class was spending time exploring the wonderful world of Eric Carle and decided to spend a week on his book, The Tiny Seed.

The group had read The Tiny Seed several times throughout the week so Erin decided to have the class work together to re-tell the major plot points.

DSCN2889 Erin then read a new book to the group: A Seed Grows by Pamela Hickman. The book introduces the different tools used in gardening.
Erin brought out some of the tools found in the book and introduced the group to her illustration: “Gus” the gardener.

“Gus” needs his tools! Erin invited each child to pick a picture of a garden tool and add it to the image. They all worked together to try and identify the different images.

Erin then had a second bag with the names of each tool and invited them to pick a word and match it to the image on the sheet.

DSCN2939 The class then headed out to the National Gallery of Art (NGA). On their way into the museum one of the NGA gardeners invited the students to check out his gardening tools.

DSCN2960 The final stop was to see Miro’s The Farm and Matisse’s Pot of Geraniums. Erin asked the group to do some close looking and describe what they saw in the two paintings. She emphasized that these paintings were both of gardens but one would be found indoors and the other outdoors. Erin then brought out “Gus” and had the group work together to identify which tools could be used to plant in either garden or both.

This class had a wonderful time learning about gardening and Eric Carle! Be sure to check back for our Teacher Feature next week!

New Classrooms: Welcoming Environments

Posted on September 5, 2014 by Cynthia Raso

The First Week of School

This week marks the start of a new school year at SEEC and I took the opportunity to walk around and see the classrooms. SEEC teachers have been working tirelessly over the past few weeks, so I was pretty excited to check out all their hard work. I was especially interested because the classroom environment has been a hot topic amongst my colleagues and over the course of the last year, I have really seen the teachers contemplating the meaning and importance of their surroundings. This shift was well illustrated in an earlier blog by one of our teachers entitled: Rethinking the Environment

The Power of the Environment

As early childhood educators, we think about arranging classrooms in ways that make sense – i.e. put the art area next to the sink or don’t put a reading area next to a noisy music area. We also think about safety and logistics too — all important. But the environment can be so much more – it can be a comforting, soothing locale that inspires children to learn, create and gain independence. Teachers are challenging themselves to think about how their classroom can engage and empower their students. The question of environment is, of course, of much broader scope than this blog, but I thought it would be great to look at some photos of our classrooms to see how our teachers are thinking about their classroom environments.

Research has proven that bright colors like red, yellow and orange, can often be over-stimulating. These colors solicit a calmer, more welcoming feeling.

This cozy corner provides a space for reading and a nook where a child can deal with feelings of frustration or anger. The canopy makes it feel especially protected and the green pillows evoke nature and feelings of calm.

These photos were posted along a seated area in one of our toddler rooms. It portrays something that all children can relate to from multiple perspectives adding a multicultural component.

"Computer lab" has never looked so good. The bench and the table are the perfect height for the 4's intro to technology.

“Computer lab” has never looked so good. The perfectly sized bench and table encourage the four’s to tinker with the computer.

Visual reminders of how a preK class wants to approach apologies.

These visual cues help SEEC’s preK class remember their classroom conversations about apologies.

Your Feedback

Teachers – do you have a space you are particularly proud of? Please share it with us. Museum educators – we would also love to see photos of learning spaces in your museums.

What is a Smithsonian Early Explorer?

Posted on July 16, 2014 by Cynthia Raso

Recently SEEC and the National Museum of Natural History formed a new partnership. We are already lucky enough to have two spaces inside this amazing museum and now, we will be offering a very special program in NMNH’s Q?rius jr. Discovery Room. This brand new early learning initiative, Smithsonian Early Explorers (SEE), builds on SEEC’s 25 years of success combining the best in early learning practice and the rich environments of the Smithsonian Institution. A small cohort of young learners, together with their caregivers, will have access to the best of the Smithsonian Institution and a curriculum focused on STEAM: science, technology, engineering, art and math.

Here’s a small taste of what to expect.

Museum

Classroom

Working with Peers

Free Play

Fun

Learn More

Smithsonian Early Explorers FAQ’s
Registration
Cynthia Raso: rasoc@si.edu or 202-633-0121