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Some rambling ideas and reflections on incorporating creativity projects in early childhood classrooms

Complete the picture task

Asking students to finish an incomplete figure can result in some interesting findings. For example, in this case, May finished the "v" figure by adding flowers and calling it a "flower vase". In other cases, students saw the picture as a mountain, kite, or even a monster. These paper-based activities are easy to administer and can be also used collaboratively, I.e. on the blackboard/whiteboard.



Picture edited with www.picnik.com

Encouraging Creativity in Early Childhood Classrooms. ERIC Digest.

• Encouraging Creativity in Early Childhood Classrooms. ERIC Digest.

  An overview of the ways in which children learn and the factors involved for teachers in fostering creativity in early childhood classrooms. Author: Edwards, Carolyn Pope - Springate, Kay Wright Source: ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education Urbana IL.

  tags: creativity, encouraging, early, childhood, art, learning

  • Encouraging Creativity in Early Childhood Classrooms.
  • children usually need adult support to find the means and the confidence to bring forth their ideas and offer them
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  • HOW YOUNG CHILDREN LEARN
  • art becomes a natural vehicle in educational approaches for helping children explore and solve problems
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  • an interest in tools and machines and enjoy trying to make things run better, fixing things, and solving functional problems
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  • it is through the unity of thinking and feeling that young children can explore their world, represent their ideas, and communicate with others at their highest level. When educators fully understand how exploration, representation, and communication feed one other, they can best help children achieve this potential.
    • - post by ahujeffrey
  • First, young children are developmentally capable of classroom experiences which call for (and practice) higher level thinking skills, including ANALYSIS (breaking down material into component parts to understand the structure, seeing similarities and differences); SYNTHESIS (putting parts together to form a new whole, rearranging, reorganizing); and EVALUATION (judging the value of material based on definite criteria)
    • - post by ahujeffrey
  • Second, young children want and need to express ideas and messages through many different expressive avenues and symbolic media.
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  • Teachers act as guides, careful not to impose adult ideas and beliefs upon the children.
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  • Third, young children learn through meaningful activities in which different subject areas are integrated
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  • Activities that are meaningful and relevant to the child's life experiences
  • Fourth, young children benefit from in-depth exploration and long-term, open-ended projects which are started either from a chance event, a problem posed by one or more children, or an experience planned and led in a flexible way by teachers
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  • WHAT TEACHERS CAN DO
  • TIME.
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  • SPACE
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  • MATERIALS
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  • CLIMATE
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  • encouragement and acceptance of mistakes, risk-taking, innovation, and uniqueness, along with a certain amount of mess, noise, and freedom.
  • an intense or arousing encounter between themselves and their inner or outer world.
  • OCCASIONS
    • - post by ahujeffrey
  • direct evidence of their senses or memories.

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Early Childhood Twitter Feeds

You can check out some of the Twitter feeds that I subscribe to at the following link: http://twitter.com/JeffreyAhu/earlychildhood

Multiple Intelligences Project for Creativity in ECE - Stage 1

This powerpoint outlines the beginning stages of a project which essentially seeks to increase the amount of expressed creativity (fluency) in preschool classes. The intervention is planned over eight sessions and adopts a multiple intelligences (MI) approach. The theoretical background, particularly for action research of this type, is discussed, as well as a proposed timeline for implementation. Brief overview of the results for the first session are included.

Creativity lesson design_Stage1

View more presentations from mrjgamble.

First Post

I am glad to have the opportunity to finally create a forum for the discussion and promotion of strategies for fostering higher order thinking skills (HOTS) in early childhood education (ECE). I will use this as an opportunity to both share my ongoing research in the area as well as to encourage interaction and collaboration among other researchers and educators who are working in similar areas. Please feel free to post comments and samples of your own research or strategies which you are currently implementing in your classroom. I hope that eventually, we can develop a community of practitioners who can learn from each other and contribute critically to the development of curricula, instructional strategies, resources, and approaches which most successfully and appropriate higher order thinking skills at this critical period of learning.

Welcome and feel free to contribute,

Jeffrey