Early Childhood Education Project – Plan & Implication

Introduction
Continuous Professional Development should be essential for every early childhood practitioner. Every setting which promotes early childhood education essentially need to plan activities for children, short term, medium term and long term, but predominantly according to children’s interest. Consistent with Aistear (2009) the author agrees that planning is an on-going process, which requires early years workers to think about short-term, long term and medium term plans. It is vital to be organised, but also to be reflective and flexible with mind always opened to plan activities together with children for short term purposes to reinforce their abilities to create and learn. Therefore it can be suggested that good planning builds on children’s prior learning and development, and accommodates each child differences (National Council for Curriculum and Assessment [NCCA], 2009).

Appropriate environment should fulfil the main objectives and aims of long term plan; to support children’s learning in creative representation, language and literacy, mathematics and science, movement, social relations, initiative and independence. I linked my medium term planning to previous observations and including elements of children’s interest I set the short term plan which was focused to support children in recognizing size and shapes, but between these two elements I engaged children to communicate, explore, and think and to be creative. Two topics I planned and carried on for children in preschool were called transport and movement. Children enjoyed activities, but more importantly, I kept all children at all times without stress and unnecessary examination, I tried to ask philosophic, open-ended questions, I left children to explore given equipments/materials and when they were ready to talk, I listened to them. The High/Scope’s small-group time always has beginning, middle and end followed by transition time, which can be very valuable for supporting children’s learning.

As well as Aistear (2009) emphasis on supporting learning and development through assessment, The High/Scope uses child’s observation record (COR) where anecdotal notes from individuals or a group are taken daily. In the end of the term likewise at the end of the whole child’s stay in setting, child is been assessed and as well is it given portfolio of art work. According to mentioned anecdotal notes, I planned two interrelated topics, and first topic is introduced below.

Topic 1: Transport

Introduction
While most of the children were previously interested in cars, I decided to support children’s learning and to expand their imagination and explain different sizes of the objects, materials or dimensions to them. Since September 2012 I have been an employee of the setting which enrols children from 2 and ½ years old but not older than 5 years old.

Santrock (2009) mentions in his Child Development book that children between 12 months and 36 months can be classified as toddlers. Therefore, I can state that I am working with two different age groups, toddlers and young children. Planning activities for two different age groups takes plenty of time because each activity needs to be appropriate for both. When I was planning two small activities for these children, chose good backup materials which helped me to keep all children focused. I am reflecting on abilities of each child to use backup material, therefore sometimes I had two or three different backups. Transport, – my first topic – was chosen from observation of children’s interests. Some children from the group of 7, playing on especially installed interior of the car in one of our play-rooms (see picture 1), other children are playing with miniatures of cars, buses or trains on the carpet pictured on the next page.

I designed two small group activities. First activity can be called the car tracks and second small group activity can be called painting car and trucks. Many aspects of active learning were included in first activity – creative representation, mathematics and science, and language and literacy. The learning goal of the first activity was exploring colours and size. In second activity, I focused children’s active learning on three-dimensional objects which according to High/Scope’s Preschool child observational record (COR) is child involved in creative representation, movement (fine motor skills) and mathematics and science. The reason why I designed two activities, which were included in topic Transport, was simple because while they were interested in this play: driving car, building train trucks, playing with toy cars, trains of truck I could support their learning by many aspects of COR, which can help them in their further learning and perhaps living, too. I linked children’s interests into active learning, which according to Hohmann and Weikart (2002) is the way how children construct their knowledge.

Activity 1: The car tracks
The aim of this activity is to enhance children’s knowledge about dimensions. I am introducing the activity in a few sentences. I inform children that this is a small group time and remind them that everybody is working on his/her own work. I give them, toy car in the little orange tray with painting brush and two different colours to each child. I use Vygotsky’s theory of scaffolding so I am going to ask questions similar to: “Have anybody seen some car or truck tracks somewhere before?” When they respond, I scaffold on their knowledge and I will suggest to them to paint the wheels of the car. Once somebody applies colour on wheel and moves the car on the paper, which would make colour painted car tracks on the paper, I am going to use Skinner’s positive reinforcement from The Operant Conditioning theory (1948). When children find the way how to use paint, brushes and cars to make a car track, then I can finally start to talk about sizes. Pencils and scissors would be used as back up material.

“I saw that nearly everybody of this group was playing with cars in last few days, so prepared small group activity for you children, and it is called ‘the car tracks’.” I am going to introduce perhaps new words such as: big, small, length, wide, short, parallel, etc. I am going to observe where the whole interest and focus is, so I can consider it into further planning.

Reflection
Everybody showed interest and all children were actively engaged in this activity and when I observed painted car trucks on the paper I could finally talk about the subject which was size, for example size of cars, length of painted tracks. No backup material was used for this activity, although I had prepared pencils for younger and scissors for older children just in case. Some children, especially younger, painted not only little wheels of the car, but the whole car, too. This observation perhaps indicates the other small group activity for a future. According to my observation, some of the children were very happy to discover new options how to use the cars and how to use paint, other children just had great fun pulling cars on paper and making couple of pictures.

Many Aistear (2009) themes were involved in this activity, such as well-being, exploring and thinking and communicating, but firstly to build relationship with children, in where they feel secure and confident enough to explore and to direct or co-direct their own learning, what according to Aistear (2009) can be considered as strategy for interaction and collaterally with Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development, where children need the help of adults to support and scaffold them as they learning new things, and this should be central in every early years practitioners nature. The other important factor of children’s learning is that they learn by being with others, by being involved in making choices and decisions and through planned and guided activities which builds on their interests and experiences in well resourced environment (NCCA, 2009).

One child says, “Look at the length of this car track”,-it suggests that this particular child gain the idea prescript on planning. The other children stated similar sentences, therefore I can suggest that the planned activity was meaningful for everybody and if I observe enormous children’s interest in cars next year, I will certainly repeat this activity because of it successfulness.

Activity 2: Painting car and trucks
The purpose of this activity is to enhance children’s experiences with dimensions plus to explore three-dimension objects, changing colours by using paint. I reflect on themes of Aistear (2009) such as communication or exploring and thinking. Learning goals of this activity are directed to explore and think about sizes of different material. Aim of this activity is to encourage children to paint on three-dimension objects, and because toy cars and trucks is used, I can interact with children about and introduce some new words, for example: wheel is the shape of a circle, truck is the shape of a rectangle, etc.

Plan
The Beginning: I am going to say “Hello Children, Who really enjoyed last small group activity, where we were painting car trucks? …I saw some of you painting not only wheel, but also you were painting the whole car…” I begin activity with materials already prepared on the table, which are car and truck, paint brush and colours on the pallet. I am going to suggest to them to use paint on the car, to change colour of the car. As a backup material, I am going to use sponges.

The Middle: As the adult will try to support children’s ideas and use of material, children can explore paint, mixing of paint, painting on three-dimension objects, when they get interested about given activity I can scaffold on their previous experiences and introduce new words, or examine older children from recent small-group activity, which was the car tracks. For example, I can ask children to compare sizes of cars. I refer children to each other for ideas. The end: I am aware that children finishing their work at different times. Based on this, Iam going to give warming near the session’s end and I will support children to conclude observations. I also suggest them to use materials, if they are interested in, during the work time (Hohmann & Weikart, 2002).

Reflection

All children were actively involved in activity; some children stayed focused and painted car or truck all around including chassis, which was another opportunity to communicate and suggest to all what some children discovered. The suitability of given activity can be observed according to the length of focusing time. Older children earlier than the young children, therefore I used backup material, which were sponges. Some children used them to wipe the paint of the car or truck, and some children used sponges to apply more paint on the material. It can be suggested that aims and goals were partly achieved, but if I will do this activity next time I will certainly change some details, for example I would give to the younger children thicker painting brushes so they would finish approximately at the same time as the others. Measuring learning goals is sometimes very hard task, I am willing not to examine children through questions on which I already know the answer, I am trying to encourage children to philosophies about given issues. I believe that children will come up with fantastic ideas or they will ask questions, because they are naturally curious.

In the end of this activity, one girl said, “Look, this window is a shape of rectangle.” I reinforced her behaviour by praise, and I asked her and do you remember what shape is this, suddenly another boy reacts and said “It’s a circle.” I was positively surprised that children are listening to what I said, while I was commenting on their work. They do not have any problem to state, what object is small or big, what was great, too. Children had plenty opportunities to communicate, which is reflected in Aistear (2009) which states that, in partnership in adult children will: use language broaden their understanding of the world by making sense of experiences through language express themselves creatively and imaginatively(ncca.ie)

Reflection on topic Transport
According to evidence, The High/Scope programme is not about final product from the small group time, either about examination of what children learnt, I let children play and explore materials. Jean Piaget states, “Knowledge arises neither from objects nor the child, but from interactions between the child and those objects (Hohmann & Weikart, 2002:15).” Therefore, overall appropriateness of activities in the first topic was good and acceptable. All children stayed focused on given activity, it can be suggested that they gained new vocabulary, they expand the options how to play and create in our setting. According to the group dynamics, many interesting observations were taken, what can help to plan further active learning. According to evidence (Hohmann & Weikart, 2002) The High/Scope programme, especially small-group time provides children with opportunities to use materials, experiment with these materials, to build on children’s strengths and above all it is suppose to be an enjoyable event. (2002: 245-253).

Topic 2: The Movement
Introduction
Anecdotal notes taken daily, helps every early years practitioner to plan activities for next day or next short term period. In my notes were observations taken from the week before I was planning two topics and had written sand play, rolling cars, and some other observations such as children were playing with marble run or building blocks. Anecdotal notes always help to design activity according to children’s interests. Active learning is the core principle of the High/Scope programme (Hohmann & Weikart, 2002). Second topic, the movement is related to transport and I consider the movement was a good way to introduce and support children’s learning of shapes. I designed three different activities for coming days, where sand play and toy cars helped me to engage children’s attention on learning outcomes what would expect to be. Age of children for this three activities varied again, from 2:7 to 4:6, so setting activities on how to explain shapes to this young children has to be carefully thought out. Although I thought I designed accurate activities for all according to their zone of proximal development (ZPD), I had to be really careful in organizing backup materials.

Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development was implicated into practice, especially ZPD, and key aspects of ZPD are divided into two levels and those are: Level 1 – the ‘present level of development’. This describes what the child is capable of doing without any help from others. Level 2 – the ‘potential level of development’. This means what the child could potentially be capable of with help from other people or ‘teachers’.(psychohawks.wordpress.com) Therefore, if children could not reach potential level of development as one expected my role then can be not to over-emphasise on what the activity was created for.

Our setting had three play rooms, first play room is designed for large group time, but also for work time, where children can play with costumes, play with toy cars, trains and other machinery included car and train tracks, lego, toy animals and wooden blocks can be found here, too. Second room is for set for table activities, but also in two corners is guaranteed valuable pretended play – kitchen area, or the other corner is designated as quiet corner with book shelf. Third room has been created in summer 2012 reflecting on my idea of indoor sand and water play. Sand table, water table with a lot of different plastic containers, funnels can be found in this room including clothing designed for play in our wet room. Two of three activities for topic movement were executed in our wet room.

I choose topic movement because of children’s interests. They were moving sand from different containers through funnel, or they were moving sand from sand table to sand likewise younger children were moving toy car around the floor in first play room. I built on children’s previous experiences and tried to develop their knowledge through, Vygotsky’s Scaffolding between I observed present level of development, which can be according to Vygotsky, Level 1 in ZPD. Following themes and learning goals from Aistear(2009) in practice, particularly theme Exploring and thinking which describes in learning goals that children in partnership with the adult gather and use information from different sources using their increasing cognitive, physical and social skills and while the children gained new experiences in those three activities under topic movement, they have been surrounded with the adult as same importantly with other children, what is significant aspect of learning their social skills (NCCA,2009). Firstly, I am going to describe activities in sand with educational focus on shapes.

Activity 3: Sand and cylinders
This activity’s learning goal was to introduce cylinder as a shape and support children’s learning through sand play about cylinders. Aim of this activity is to encourage children’s confidence of recognizing shapes. One of the groups where Aistear’s 12 principles are mentioned is learning and developing. The Aistear (2009) in principle play and hands-on experience, emphasis on play and using appropriate materials what is also used in activity 3. By giving children materials to explore instead of only talking about it, children will according to Aistear (2009) explore social, physical and imaginary words (NCCA,2009).

For this activity, I need sand table, tray in which I will propose materials to the children, particularly two different sized cylinders (small and big), one wooden cube and spade. As back up material I am going to use junk materials, such as yogurt pots and containers and funnels. I am going to introduce this activity, through what I observed in recent days, “Today’s small-group activity will be in sand, we are going to play with materials called – cylinder and cubes, and I wonder what you can do with them in the sand. I also have spades for you in orange tray for each of you children”. After introduction, I will observe what children do with given materials and if some of them discover something what I could built up on, I will interact with him/her.

By the time I will interact with every child and I will try scaffold their learning. I will inform children when I plan to finish activity, by stating “two more minutes left in this activity”, and then “Children, You have one more minute left” and nearly before finishing activity I will state “Children, Time is nearly up, if You would like to play with cylinders and cubes, you can certainly do it, but at the work time”. If anything is observed, I will write it into my anecdotal notebook.

Reflection
Children started activity and I explained to them, that everybody has lot of space, just in case they would touch or destruct others work. Children played with cylinders and cubes, some of them stick cylinders into the sand and started to talk about what cylinders are for them in that moment, the other children pushed cylinders and cubes into sand and started to put more sand on the top of those wooden materials. For some children cylinders were towers, for other children the combination of cylinder and cube was house or castle, some children lost interest quickly so I used backup material for those. Combination of wooden material and sand worked, children told me creatively about objects what they were playing with. One younger child even took cylinder out from sand and started to roll it on the sand, which was really good, because I could interact and talk about movement of different particles. I liked it even more when children listened to me very carefully when I was talking about things, which I presume were completely new for them.

According to The Behaviourists, such as Skinner and The Nativists, such as Chomsky, who proposed his view about language acquisition device (LAD) or The Interactionists, such as Bruner, who proposed theory about language acquisition support system (LASS) it can be suggested that language development reflects on this activity because of adult support of offering new words to children and various help I provided to explain asked questions (Schaffer, 2004). I aimed to support children’s learning in recognizing shapes, this worked only partly. The reason why I suggest that that aim of recognizing shapes worked only partly is because only two children repeated word cylinder by recognising a shape of the object. Therefore, next time when I get a chance to provide similar activity according to their interest, I will emphasis words such as cylinder or cube more often. Overall children had a good fun and they all seem to be happy about sand play during this small-group activity which is according to Aistear’s theme of well-being where children are happy, confident and healthy, and I gave them opportunity to learn and develop.

Activity 4: Sand and marble ball
Activity reflects on children’s interest on sand play. During the work time on previous, F asked me to play with him with marble ball. Therefore, I planned to support children’s learning of another shape and that it spare, because I could introduce the activity with sentences: “Hello Children, and now when we have a small-group time, we can play and explore again. I saw You really enjoyed activity yesterday, so we are going to work in sand again, but yesterday F was playing with this sphere (marble ball) and he had a great fun with it so we are going to use it here in sand. I wonder what you going to use share for, I do not know is it rolling on the sand, or can we use it somehow else?”

Plan
I am going to use orange tray with this materials: sphere(marble ball), yogurt pot, one cylinder, funnel and spade. As backup, if needed, I am going to use paper measuring tape. I am going to introduce activity through statement mentioned above; in the middle of activity I am going to use Vygostky’s scaffolding and when children’s conversations will be about shapes and evidently to the topic, I am going to use Skinner’s theory of operant conditioning, particularly positive reinforcement.

Hands-on experience Aims and learning goals of this activity are link to Aistear’s (2009) themes and principles. I found Aistear’s principle of hands-on experiences absolutely significant and every setting in Ireland should use this principle in early childhood education. Through hand-on experience children can also become effective communicators and learners (NCCA, 2009). This activity is designed for young children. I recommend not involving babies or toddlers into this activity because of little pieces of equipment used. Therefore, it can be suggested that this activity is designed for preschool children, which attend the setting where I support children’s learning.

Reflection
Children started to use all offered materials straight after we started this small-group activity and by the split second, nearly all group of children lost or put out of vision sphere in sand. The main objective of my plan was lost in the sand. I spent lot of time finding these little marble balls in sand instead of interacting with children about their discovered ideas. Whole activity extends unusually, and while I was trying to save shape focused activity, some younger children stocked sand into their pockets on trousers. The only thing that worked was that majority of children remembered cylinder as a shape and object corresponding to it. I tried to emphasise on word sphere, but accurate reaction was not found. I did not examine children by asking them what this is by pointing on sphere; therefore I cannot prove my aim of expanding children’s knowledge on shapes. Although, activity went different way as I prognosed, it can be suggested that children still used fine motor skills, to grab and play with given equipment, as well as hand eye coordination was practised. Combination of marble ball with funnels and spade does not work for this small-group activity for reaching my goals, however, children suggested me some good ideas.

Another small-group time can be concentrated for example on measuring, and perhaps other elements of nature, such as water can be used. By this activity I could extend children’s vocabulary by introducing new words about measuring.

Activity 5: Roll the car, roll the wheel
I planned this activity to encourage children to think about and explore environment around them. Between the educational focus is on shapes, particularly on circle, I tried to engage boy – T to conversation. T’s developmental check should be done according to me and my colleague’s observation and because his holistic development is behind his peers, my manager suggested to his mother to take him to his general practitioner for help. By then I design a few small activities to support him in any kind of difficulties. Aistear’s theme of communication is involved in this roll the car,roll the wheel activity. I tried to accommodate shape – circle is learning goal of designed activity, and I believed that large-group time would be better to support children’s learning about circle as a shape.

Plan

I am going to situate children into big circle and I explain to them what are we going to do. I am going to engage children to use bigger toy car to roll it from one to other. While children rolls car to other children, they think and say what else have wheels and its can be seen on the road on in the fields. I am going to introduce this activity by informing: “At today’s large group time activity, we are going to use car, to roll it to each other, but between of that I want you to think and tell us all, what else have whell like this car and its moving?”

Communicating and thinking

Two of the Aistear’s themes are included in this activity: communicating and thinking and exploring. As a main difference in the High/Scope small and large-group time can be suggested that in large-group time activity, each child gets opportunity to lead the group, if the child is interested in leading of the group.Aim of this activity, between educational focus on shape, is also engage children into turn taking likewise practicing other social skills such as listening when somebody else is speaking (NCCA, 2009).

Reflection
Surprisingly, one of children which were sitting on the ground in the circle starts singing, ‘wheels on the bus song’. The other children (who knew the song) sang with this little girl. In play-room can be suddenly heard:

The wheels on the bus goRound and round, round and round, Round and Round.

The wheel on the bus goRound and round,All Through the town.

I asked children what other songs they knew, and they all had one to sing, so I suggested to them to take turns and whoever knows the song, can join in and sing with person who starts singing new song. Children took turns beautifully, the only issue I had was, that my learning goal on shape- circle nearly was not reached. Before the end of the activity, I praisedm children for suggesting nice song and I told them, “when you can move your arms into the circle, you can go and pick up your lunch bag”, because it was lunch time for our preschoolers. One child from the group of seven moved hands circular way the rest of them just run to get their lunches from the hall. Therefore, educational focus on circle as shape I wanted to introduce to children was not successful.

Although children did not fulfil my idea of large-group time that day, they were happy and smiling, which according to Aistear (2009) involved in element of psychological well-being including feeling and thinking as part of: the Early Childhood Curriculum Framework’s theme of well-being (NCCA, 2009). If the similar activity occurs in our setting, I will ‘go with the flow’ again and I will not interrupt children while they are having fun throughout singing songs at large-group time. Evidence suggests that when a child feels psychologically happy, there is no reason to interrupt the activity, just to focus on educational outcomes and by doing that is can be disturbing for a child (Schaffer, 2004).

Reflection on topic: Movement
Overall, the appropriateness of the topic was acceptable for setting which works with young children. In this topic was included one large- group activity. Reason behind of including different type of the activity comparing to the rest of the activities was because in group of seven children, one child has diagnosed disease. Interaction of this child with other children should be extended as much as possible because of child’s neurodevelopment disorder (Kramer, 1993). Effectively, just this child started to sing wheel on the bus song, so suddenly it could lead whole group, when it not getting chances to do this often.

According to evidence, in the High/Scope’s active learning, key experiences of children at age between 2 ½ to 5 years old are series of activities to develop their social, cognitive and physical abilities and it can be argued that Aistear (2009) agrees with it, too. Therefore fulfilling our programme in the setting, we are interconnecting Irish curriculum framework, which can be great example for settings in Ireland which does not work according to any programme.

Movement, as a chosen topic to support children’s learning in preschool is likewise stated as one of the High/Scope Preschool Key Experiences, but comparing my topic: movement is in learning outcomes, where I was focused on shapes, which in same way involves many other High/Scope Preschool Key Experiences for example: creative representation, language and literacy, classification or initiative and Social relations (Hohmann & Weikart, 2002). Activities were based on children experiences and interests from previous days, therefore, it can be suggested that children learnt actively during this process. I would certainly plan some activities from this topic to deeper detail next time so I would be able to state that throughout chosen topic movement children developed holistically.

Overall Coherence of Project
“The creations of the environment rich in key experiences, and the delivery of appropriate adult support, are critical elements in educating young children (Hohmann & Weikart, 2002:23).” In both topics, which are related to each other throughout main reasons, transport can be defined as moving things or humans from place to another place and movement can be everything what is not stabile on one place for all the time. Therefore, coactive factor can be used as a tool for active learning once is well planned. When activities are planned according to children’s interest, it can lead to better concentration on play and it can also support the development of increasingly complex play (Hohmann & Weikart 2002:172). To reflect on my ability to plan two topics interrelated together I need to take in count the originality of the idea and other important aspect of this work is in relating project into children’s accurate interests. “Reflective practice is the buzzword in early childhood (Murray & Urban, 2012:87).”

Aistear emphasis on reflective practice as a key to professionalism, to critically reflect on coherence of two topics conjoined together into the project, I need to argue that I am not happy with the result educational outcomes, but on the other hand I’m happy the I can lead this children in stress less environment, where their knowledge is gently extended daily. Listening to children is very important. Listening to children gave me many opportunities to reflect on my plans and sometimes improvise with given activity. Supporting children’s learning and development demands watching and listening to the children, setting tasks and ongoing observations and conversations with children provide the adult with rich information on children’s progress and achievements as young learners (NCCA, 2009).

Five activities, which were formed in two topics, transport and movement included lot of different types of play. Creative play and fantasy play where children used their imaginations, manipulative play, where some children practiced and other refined their motor skills, constructive and language play was used, too. Associative/partnership play when they played together, supported development of interactions and through doing things together, younger children could also developed on older children by observing them. Vygotsky’s approach of scaffolding used nearly in every activity provides an effective way to reach potential levels of development. Two manes of topics used in this project logically interrelates together, but by reviewing my activities and sharing information with children about play, I will be more capable to set other topics, where children’s learning pays a central role.

Reference List

Hohmann, M., Weikart, D., (2002) Educating Young Children, 2nd ed., Active Learning Practices for Preschool and Child Care Programs. Michigan, High/Scope Press. Kramer, P.D., (1993) Listening to Prozac. USA, Viking Press

Murray, C., Urban, M., (2012) Diversity & Equality in Early Childhood, An Irish Perspective. Dublin, Gill & Macmillan National Council and Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) (2009), Aistear: the Early Childhood Curriculum Framework, Dublin: National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, www.ncca.ie/earlylearning. Santrock, J. W. (2009) Child Development, 12th Ed.. New York: McGraw-Hill Schaffer, R. H. (2004) Introducing Child Psychology, United Kingdom: Blackwell Publishing