Art and Creative Development for Young Children
ART AND CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT FOR YOUNG CHILDREN, 7th Edition, is a comprehensive, must-have resource for establishing and implementing a developmentally appropriate art program. Written for pre-service and in-service early childhood professionals in child care, preschool, or kindergarten through third grade settings, the text takes a child-centered approach to art education. The book blends theory and research with practical applications as it discusses important topics and issues related to creative experience, including art and the developing child, special needs and diversity, and children's artistic development. Also discussed are planning, developing, implementing, and evaluating art along with strategies for integrating art across the curriculum. The updated Seventh Edition gives greater emphasis to communication with families, and includes such new topics as digital camerawork and the use of recycled materials in art.
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Young Children as Artists A Developmental View
Art and Aesthetics
Providing Art Experiences
Roles and Strategies
Where to Go in Your Local Community for Artistic Junk
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Effects of Different Types of Chinese Characters on the Ability of Character Recognition for Chinese Children
This study examined how different categories of Chinese characters and their phonetic components affected character learning and character recognition. Participants were 3655 Chinese students from grades 1 through 9. Results indicated that there was a statistically significant relationship between grade and accuracy of character recognition at the elementary level, but not in junior high, and that some categories were significantly more difficult to recognize than others. The category that was the most difficult to recognize was the one in which there was a phonetic component embedded in the character. When this category was further broken into five subtypes, there were significant differences in recognition accuracy among these subtypes. To summarize, ease of learning individual characters is related to the category in which they belong, as well as the presence of an embedded phonetic component.
||Chinese Characters, Character Recognition, Phonetic Component
The International Journal of Learning, Volume 16, Issue 7, pp.155-172.
Article: Print (Spiral Bound).
Article: Electronic (PDF File; 1.613MB).
Assistant Professor, Center for Teacher Education, National Sun Yat-sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
I graduated from the Ph.D. program in Learning and Cognition at the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Minnesota in January 2004. I have had considerable research experiences in two related areas, in learning and cognition and in educational measurement. My recent research focuses on reading fluency, the effect of repeated reading on reading comprehension, and text readability in Chinese. I conducted several research studies in reading assessment and intervention. For example, I have developed and conducted a reading program in the elementary school that was designed to improve the reading ability for the immigrant Children in Taiwan. In addition, I have developed a program to calculate the readability of texts written in Chinese. I also have been developing a standardized test for measuring Chinese reading fluency in Taiwan.
Professor, Department of Educational Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
In 1953 I graduated from Queens College in New York City with a degree in elementary education and taught for more than ten years in New York and California. In 1965 I left California and took a position as an assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Minnesota where I continue to teach classes on the psychology of teaching and conduct research on the reading process. My research interests include the development of materials and methods for improving word recognition, fluency, and comprehension. I also investigate how to facilitate the young reader’s understanding of moral themes as well as measuring fluency. In 1985 the National Reading Council gave me its research award, and in 1987 the International Reading Association gave me its award for research on the reading process. I also am a member of the Reading Hall of Fame. In 1986, I received the College of Education Distinguished Teaching Award. I also received the International Reading Association William S. Gray Research Award and the National Reading Conference Oscar Causey Research Award. I am a member of the National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development National Reading Panel.
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|Title: ||Whole language and design and technology education|
|Authors: ||Hutchinson, Patricia|
|Issue Date: ||1992|
|Publisher: ||© Loughborough University|
|Citation: ||HUTCHINSON, P., 1992. Whole language and design and technology education. IDATER 1992 Conference, Loughborough: Loughborough University|
|Abstract: ||The "Whole Language" movement has swept American elementary education over the last three or four years. Whole language refers to an approach to teaching that is highly integrative and thematic, where children learn language skills in the context of real-world problem-solving activities.
Concurrent with but isolated from whole language have been two other major educational movements, one to reformulate education generally in terms of "outcomes" and one to update the content and delivery of technology education.
Outcomes-based education requires progression toward adult outcomes starting with the earliest school experiences. One adult outcome generally agreed upon is technological capability. To many people this implies a need for kindergarten-to-twelfth-grade (K-12) technology education.
In the US, technology is closely associated with science, a considerably weaker area of the elementary curriculum than language. Technology education is a daunting new idea to elementary teachers, the more so when associated with science. Whole language, however, provides a comfortable entree for technology into elementary education, since it can be seen as a logical extension of thematic problem- solving into the realm of practical activity. To date, little effort is being made to take advantage of this natural connection.|
|Description: ||This is a conference paper.|
|Appears in Collections:||IDATER Archive|
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In this century technological and educational needs increase drastically. Out of local language, educators need to teach robotic language and use necessary technologies to design robots like Arduino set. This set let users to know less code/computer language and knowledge about electronics. Users may develop their own robots with this set. It also improves design and implementation skills. However, it is not a suitable design for blinds. Universal design approach suggests educators to design courses in a way to meet the needs of all participants. By this approach, learning environments are helpful and useful for participants with special needs. With the scope of the study we suggest a three steps course design for robotics education; introducing with appropriate materials, using real materials with descriptions and discussing for further designs. In the first step bigger materials with big holes and big bottoms will be used to make sense about devices. In the second step, during the sighted learners are testing we suggest to educator to describe what is happening. The last step will be about imagination for what we should do more. Present study may lead to new insights on how to introduce system to blinds during the learning process.
Bülbül, Mustafa Şahin
"A Universal Design for Robotics Education,"
Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities: Vol. 20
, Article 2.
Available at: http://scholarworks.rit.edu/jsesd/vol20/iss1/2
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Remembering Manet on the Anniversary of his Passing, April 30
Manet is commonly understood as being the leader of the Impressionist painters but he was not particularly interested in light, rather he was interested in portraying contrast. At a time when the favored style was conservative, dark, and religious, Manet challenged the accepted art world by presenting unconventional themes and effects. Thereby a better description of him would be as a leader of a new modern phase in art, rather than specifically as a leader of the Impressionist movement.
A bit of an enigma if you will, Manet never embraced the Impressionist label and was never particularly keen on historical art, but seemed to draw a lot of inspiration from the Renaissance artists. In fact, he re-created many of their paintings by bringing them up to date. Such examples are Raphael’s Judgment of Paris, which can be seen in his work Dejeuner sur l’Herbe, and Titian’s Venus of Urbino, which is reinterpreted in his work Olympia. A fascinating man, with complex interests and artistic influences, his passing today over 153 years ago reminds us of the limitations of labels in the art world and how important it is to challenge the conventions.
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Early childhood experiences at Namadgi School emphasise active engagement through play and project based learning experiences to promote creativity, imagination and scope for a child to invent and explore.
Teachers direct, scaffold, extend or intervene with children in order to ensure that children are actively engaged and learning skills and understandings in literacy and numeracy.
At Namadgi School we see Kindergarten as the start of the formal schooling process. Kindergarten is an important milestone in children's schooling and sets the educational scene for your child. There is a focus on developing friendships in a safe and supportive environment. Kindergarten teachers plan learning experiences for students to work with a variety of peers to support this development.
Children are encouraged to problem solve with each other and develop the confidence to take risks as learners. There is an emphasis on sound and numeral recognition and applying this knowledge to purposeful, engaging learning tasks.
Years 1 - 2
Students in Years One and Two engage in meaningful learning experiences through a range of purposeful and engaging tasks. They are supported, challenged and extended as they build on the foundational knowledge from earlier years in preparation for the higher levels of literacy, numeracy and inquiry required in the upper primary years.
Primary school at Namadgi School encompasses Years 3 to 5. During these years literacy and numeracy concepts developed in Early Childhood are consolidated and built upon through purposeful and engaging learning tasks. Teachers support and encourage independent learning to prepare students for their learning in the Middle School (Years 6 - 8). The use of technologies to enhance learning is a feature of the Primary School.
Students in Primary School also experience Japanese and Science taught by specialist teachers. Science lessons include a focus on Environmental Science through the Urambi Environmental Centre and students are encouraged to investigate and care for their local environment.
Music is a feature of the Primary School curriculum. All students are involved in singing at community events. Students in Year 5 may participate in the Year 5 woodwind band through the Instrumental Music Program.


What is Classical Education? Peace Lutheran Academy’s curriculum is based on the Trivium (TRIV – ee – um), which dates back to the ancient Greeks. The Trivium divides elementary instruction into three basic parts: grammar, logic, and rhetoric. “Grammar” (not just the parts of speech) includes learning the basic knowledge, information, facts, and vocabulary of a particular subject. History, for example, has its own “grammar”—the people, places, events, dates, and important documents, etc. that are a part of that subject. “Logic” is that part of instruction that helps students use and understand what that information or “grammar” means. For example, the original thirteen American colonies declared independence from Great Britain in 1776. That’s grammar. To understand why they declared independence and what that independence means is the “logic” stage. Finally, “rhetoric” is the stage that encourages the thoughtful use of the “grammar” and “logic” of the subject in applying that knowledge to one’s own life or new situations in the world. In American history, for example, “rhetoric” might include the ability to write an essay that analyzes contemporary foreign policy in light of the founding principles of our republic. The foundation of “grammar” and “logic” are essential for the “rhetoric” stage and are the basics for an elementary education. “Rhetoric” begins in the elementary school and develops more fully at the high school and college level. Peace Lutheran Academy provides the solid foundation for future growth and success beyond the grade school years. Our students do extremely well in high school and college.


A question I’m frequently asked by parents at Music Bus is “what’s the best age for my child to start learning a musical instrument?” If your child responds well to music and has expressed an interest in learning an instrument, it is without doubt a beautiful skill to nurture. Learning an instrument can also have a positive impact on many areas of your child’s life, as well as developing their love and understanding of music. It can boost their confidence, help their understanding of maths, their cognitive development, hand eye co ordination, concentration and co -operation to follow instructions, as well as giving them a skill they have for life. As children develop at different rates, the following are general guidelines for starting to learn musical instruments at various ages. I’ve also included a list of questions below to consider when deciding if your child is ready to begin formal lessons.
What’s the right instrument for your child?
If you and your child have a chosen instrument in mind, one of the best ways to start is often to attend a group lesson with other children of the same age. If your child has already attended a music group when they were younger, then a group class will be a natural progressive step. Otherwise, you will need to find a good teacher for your child, often your local music shop will be able to help you.
If possible, a good idea is to attend live concerts and events and let your child experience an orchestra playing and hear and see different instruments being played. Maybe even try a concert specifically promoted for children. Often music stores, schools or colleges have an open day when you can go and try out different musical instruments or they will demonstrate them. Take your child along and let them experience first hand a range of suitable instruments.
Musical Instruments at school
When your child enters school, usually in about year 1 or 2, group lessons are available in some instruments. Often there is also the opportunity to join in playing in a group or orchestra with their friends which can provide a fulfilling experience. Depending on where you live, instruments such as the recorder are learnt in Key stage 1 at school but in some areas instruments such as djembe drums and ukuleles are increasingly being provided for children to use as part of their music education.
Ages 5 – 7 years
As a general guideline, the piano and keyboard are instruments to consider starting to learn at the age of approximately 5-7 years, and older. Before this age a child’s fingers and hands are too small and they will struggle. The piano, in particular will provide your child with a good foundation for their future music learning in any instrument.
Ages 7 years and older
At around the age of 7 years, string instruments such as the guitar or violin could be introduced. There are many sizes of violins available, 9 in total, and guitars range from ¼ size to full size, therefore you could begin with a smaller version of your chosen instrument which will, for example, have a smaller neck, with the frets closer together, thereby making playing easier for your child. As they grow, so can their instrument. Once you have a teacher, they can usually advise you on the right size to buy. Another instrument to consider at this age is the drums.
Studies on different areas of the brain and the neural connections that are made from birth, illustrate that the window of opportunity for a child to learn a musical instrument is at it’s highest before the age of 10 years. After that this learning becomes more difficult. So whilst there’s no right or wrong age to start learning a musical instrument the best research says to start before your child is 10 years old and in my opinion the earlier the better.
Some questions to consider before starting music lessons for children
- Is there a particular instrument your child has expressed an interest in learning to play?
- How developed are their fine motor skills and their hand-eye co ordination?
- Could they concentrate for a 20-30 minute lesson?
- Will they want to attend a regular lesson and will they practice regularly?
- Are they beginning to read? Can they identify and understand numbers and letters?
All three of my daughters started their post Music Bus musical journey with the recorder and between them have graduated variously to violin, piano, guitar, drums and ukelele. They love being able to entertain but more than that, they love being able to play for their own pleasure. Mike and I are immensely proud of them and I wish you all the joy of listening to your child master an instrument and make beautiful music.


Date of Completion
Elementary Education | Gifted Education
Parents are key stakeholders in children’s education; this project, which is part of a larger study about early identification of high potential, focused on parent awareness of the behaviors that indicate high potential and the kinds of resources that would support developing academic potential in the early grades (grades K-2). This project consisted of an online parent survey and a parent workshop with a card sort component in which parents indicated what kinds of resources would be priorities. The study took place in three school districts with large populations of families from low-income backgrounds. A total of 38 parents completed the survey, and 57 card sets were collected during workshops.
Findings demonstrated that parents emphasized several key behaviors indicating high potential such as being highly curious; learning quickly and easily; and finding useful, often original ways to spot and solve problems. Overall, parents thought it was important to allow for independence, creativity, and critical thinking, as well as time together for fun and academics. Parents were interested in learning more about the best parenting practices for gifted students, ways to teach their children academic skills at home, and ways to partner with their children’s schools.
O'Brien, Jennifer L., "A Study of Parent Perceptions of Advanced Academic Potential in the Early Grades" (2017). Honors Scholar Theses. 536.


In Edwardian England all children went to school but that didn’t mean things were fair
By the first decade of the 20th century a lot had changed for children in England and Wales. In 1880 the Elementary Education Act made school compulsory for every child aged between five and ten, with the leaving age rising to 12 in 1899. In 1902 – the year after Queen Victoria’s death – the Education Act gave local councils control of schools and another act in 1904 decided that secondary schools should teach the same core subjects. However, things were far from equal and in the early-20th century the job your parents did and how much money they made could determine the education you received.
The upper classes sent their children to private schools (also called public schools) that charged high fees but guaranteed their children would receive an education worthy of high society. Some schools even had their own cadet force to prepare the boys for careers as army officers. Meanwhile, public schools for girls trained them to become well-to-do wives and while the boys played rugby, their sisters would focus on how to be the perfect hostess.
Schools for the middle classes – the children of professionals and small businessmen – were similar, but the fees were lower and the school’s reputation rarely meant the pupils could attend the best universities. Meanwhile, the children of the average working-class family attended free schools where going to university wasn’t an option. Instead they learnt practical skills that would prepare the boys for manual work and the girls for housework.
Canings and birchings
Although corporal punishment is now illegal in British schools, in the 1910s children were punished by being struck on the bottom (for boys) or the hands (for girls). The number of painful ‘strikes’ would represent the seriousness of the behaviour, with the largest number reserved for bullying, cheating in exams or skipping school. The bamboo cane – usually about a centimetre (0.4 inches) thick and a metre (3.3 feet) long – is the best-known form of corporal punishment dished out by Edwardian teachers, although a bundle of birch twigs – sometimes confusingly referred to as a ‘birch rod’ – could also be used and a leather strap called a tawse was common in Scottish schools. Beatings weren’t the only punishment, as teachers often slapped children or threw books and ink wells at them, pulled their hair or forced them to stand for hours on end.
This article originally appeared in How It Works issue 70, written by James Hoare


Making learning personal
Our Primary School is warm and welcoming; and focuses on allowing every student to learn in an understanding and supportive environment.
The curriculum is tailored to meets each students’ needs, interests and abilities, making sure that the student is always learning in a way that feels safe, familiar, accessible and appropriate.
The curriculum is broad and balanced including where appropriate The International Primary curriculum for topic-based work as well as PE, PSHE, including emotional literacy and social skills.
Through our well-planned and organised curriculum, students are helped to:
- Develop essential literacy and numeracy skills
- Develop the attitudes, understanding and skills to become successful learners
- Develop an enquiring mind
- Develop personal values, qualities and attitudes, recognising the importance of being respectful to other people, and to value their views and opinions
- Develop and extend strategies to help manage emotions and behaviour
- Develop strategies to be able to work cooperatively with others
- Develop their creativity, and work towards achieving their potential.
Reading Schemes include: –
- Oxford Reading Tree
- Project X
The scheme the students follow is dependent on their reading age. In addition to this, some students are free readers who are supported by class staff to choose appropriate texts, all students learn via systematic synthetic phonics.
We work collaboratively with parents, and professionals throughout the school, to ensure that our teaching is lively, interesting, motivating and enjoyable.
Our primary pupils benefit from purpose built play equipment, a soft play room, sensory room as well as accessing the local community to experience outdoor learning, including den building and other team building activities.


Between 4 and 6 months of age, your baby is old enough to begin eating pureed baby foods. Pureed baby foods are your child's first introduction to regular foods, because they are easy to swallow and don't pose a choking hazard. If your baby has started to easily gulps down the purees, it might be time to start thinking about introducing small pieces of the food that the rest of the family is eating. Knowing the approximate age that babies are ready to eat table foods will help you decide when the time is right for your little one to take this next step.
When your baby reaches about 8 months old, he's probably quite adept at swallowing a variety of baby food purees. He's probably also started showing interest in what you're eating by reaching for your fork or plate at meal times. You can start introducing a variety of table foods at this age, as long as they are soft and cut into tiny pieces. The Healthy Children.org website, from the American Academy of Pediatrics states that food for babies and toddlers be cut into 1/2-inch sized pieces to avoid choking. As your baby approaches 9 months of age, he'll be able to start picking up his own food, so serving foods that aren't pureed is a good way to encourage this new skill.
Puree or Solid?
The primary reason that younger babies need pureed baby foods is because they don't have the dexterity to chew food thoroughly and they usually don't have enough teeth, either. Pureed foods prevent choking because they simply require your little one to swallow them. Eating solid foods is a benefit as your baby gets older because you can expose him to a wider variety of nutritious options with many different flavors and textures. Learning to feed himself these foods encourages fine motor skill development, too.
It'll take some getting used to once you begin serving foods your baby has to gum or chew instead of foods he just has to swallow. Start by mixing tiny pieces of the table foods into a puree he already enjoys. Grind or fork-mash the new foods before adding them to the puree so they don't pose a choking hazard. You might also cut new foods into tiny pieces and scatter them on his high chair. That way he can choose which ones he'd like to try, as well as work on fine-tuning his pincher grasp as he picks them up. Eat meals with your baby so he can watch how to use a spoon or fork, too. That will set the stage for learning how to use a spoon to transfer food into his own mouth, which he'll be able to do in the next few months.
Only serve your baby soft foods that are easy to gum or chew. Bananas, peaches, well-cooked green beans, small pieces of bread and cooked pasta are a few options that most babies enjoy. Certain foods that are hard, round and smooth, like hot dogs, raw carrots, grapes, olives, cherries,raisins, popcorn and nuts, pose a choking hazard and should not be offered to your baby at all at this age, no matter how small the pieces are cut. according to the Healthy Children.website, a website from the American Academy of Pediatrics. For other foods, cut into pieces that are no larger than 1/2-inch sized pieces, recommends Healthy Children.org. Always supervise your baby when he's eating to help reduce the risk of choking. You shouldn't feed babies under the age of 1 honey, either. Honey contains spores that can cause botulism in babies, according to KidsHealth.
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Why Preschool Dance?
Every person can learn from dancing. Not everyone will grow up to perform dramatic leaps in a corps de ballet or to shuffle off to Buffalo with the Rockettes, but every child deserves the opportunity to dance. For babies and toddlers, creative movement offers a range of experiences that facilitate natural, easy play and proper development of alignment, neurological coordination and a fundamental exploration of baseline concepts that are the building blocks for future learning. For preschoolers, children about 2 1/2 to four, movement play in a creative dance setting can help to provide an essential educational experience. Through movement, songs, games and rhymes, children not only flex their muscles as they gain strength and endurance, but they challenge themselves emotionally and cognitively as well.
What should I look for in a Creative Dance class?
Creative dance for small children approaches many ways of learning. Inherently kinesthetic, a solid creative dance class should be appealing to both boys and girls, offering ample opportunity to hop, bound, run, dive, leap, jump, turn, kick, and stretch. Kids, of course, love to move. As an educational model, dance uses rhythm, honing children’s aural skills, and giving them a chance to approach conceptual ideas through their bodies. Creative dance also relies on linguistic play like rhymes and games that involve the use of fun new language and vocabulary. Academically speaking, in a ten-week session of creative dance for preschoolers, your child can and should be exposed to most of the basic academic bases they’ll climb to in their elementary education. But they’ll tackle these new ideas not through tests and standards, but through fun, playful and engaging activities.
What can I hope to see from consistent attendance?
When children dance together, something amazing happens. Creative dance is a tremendous learning modality for the individual, but what’s thrilling to see as a teacher and parent is the way children begin to embrace new ideas that foster community building and social connections. Under the care of a dedicated teacher, even the tiniest dancers can look at and appreciate each other’s choreographic efforts, applaud each other’s determination and zeal and work together to solve problems. While they’re just having a great time singing and dancing and being silly, they’re also addressing important meta-cognitive learning needs. Simply put, these small dancers can begin to see the differences in the way they think and feel compared to other people, to accept and celebrate these differences, and to have the necessary vocabulary to sort out their experiences. This level of objectivity about other people is something that will serve any child well as he or she encounters the larger classes and variety of experiences that loom in early educational experiences. The creative dance method offers children and their caregivers tools for learning for a lifetime.
As with any enriching educational activity, consistency is key. You and your child can play at the pool once or twice over the course of a few months, and have a great time. But if your goal is to have your child become safe and comfortable in the water, you’re probably going to want to take regular lessons. That’s why it’s recommended that children be involved in a regular creative dance class, so they can get to know the teacher and his/her classmates, so they have the chance to build on the conceptual vocabulary that has been worked with in previous weeks and so they can gain a greater understanding of the material. But most importantly, consistency and the repetition and affirmation it affords will provide your child with a wider launch pad for their own creativity both in and out of class.
Here are a few of the benefits of Creative Dance for preschoolers:
– Increased body awareness, kinesthetic comfort and ease
– Improved alignment, flexibility and neurological patterning
– Emotional and social growth and development
– Greater self-esteem and autonomy
– Linguistic and aural (listening) skills enhanced
– Beginning understanding of academics such as math, reading, spelling and science
– Approaches ‘classroom skills’ necessary for school experiences, such as taking turns, following directions, listening, sharing and communicating needs and feelings
– Develops an early creative spark in individuals and groups
For more information on the benefits of dance and other art forms on early childhood education, please refer to our main office at 856.778.5955


In order to begin understanding Gullah music, it is important to think about the origins of Gullah culture. Though sources differ on the exact origin of the word Gullah, most agree that the African Americans called Gullah are descended from enslaved West Africans brought to the American Southeast for the purpose of cultivating rice. West Africa is a rice growing region, so slaves were sought from these particular countries specifically for their agricultural expertise.
The sea islands of Georgia and South Carolina were largely inaccessible except by boat and therefore very isolated. As a result of a malaria outbreak, plantation owners only came to the islands to supervise during working hours and returned to the mainland at night leaving the Gullah to develop their distinct culture (language, food, and music) after the work day was done. Though these slaves came from the same region of Africa they did not all speak the same language. As a language, Gullah is based on English but includes vocabulary and grammatical elements common to several West African languages.
In Music Education through Gullah, Marianne Rice explains that Gullah music is rhythmic in nature and because drumming was not allowed by plantation owners, several techniques of clapping were used to take the place of drums. The bass tone clapping is created by cupping both hands together, whereas the baritone clap is created by having one hand flat and cupping the palm with the other hand. A tenor clap is created by clapping with both hands flat.
“Plantation melodies were the first-known songs of the Gullah,” Rice writes. They are work songs about daily life on the plantation, and they varied from plantation to plantation. Work songs were sung a capella and had 3-4 lines. Call and response was often utilized with a phrase sung by a soloist that was echoed by the group. Spirituals emerged in the 1800s when African slaves began converting to Christianity. Spirituals share several characteristics with Gullah plantation songs such as the inclusion of syncopation and hand clapping and foot stomping.


- Instead of using the constant drilling tactics of flash cards to learn the alphabet, create the letters with play dough.
Start by separating the play dough into small pieces then have your children roll the play dough between their hands to create long, skinny, cylinder shapes. Using these pieces, children can manipulate them to make different letters. If your children are alphabet novices, it is okay to have a card for each upper and lower case letter available to use as a model so they can either create the letter next to the card or on it. If your children are the alphabet experts already, tell them the letters and have them make those from memory. Make it challenging by encouraging the creation of both the upper and lower case letters! To extend this activity, have pictures of different items available so your children can select the pictures that start with the letters made. This fun activity will enhance letter recognition and is a great basis for literacy development.
- Order the play dough by different sizes.
Create different sizes of squares, stars, or whatever shapes you choose and have your children put them in order from biggest to smallest or smallest to biggest. (Cookie cutters work great for creating the shapes.) Start with three different sizes then add more if your children need to be challenged. To extend this activity, ask your children to make the different sizes then put them in order from smallest to largest. Like before, ask the children to add more sizes to add a degree of difficulty. Ordering by size develops the ability to compare objects as well as pattern and sequence them which supports the beginnings of math success.
- Sort play dough by color or shapes.
Buy different colors of play dough and have your children create small balls with them. Place the different color balls in a pile on the table. Have your children sort the balls by the different colors. For more of a challenge, create different shapes with the different colors such as stars, squares, triangles, etc. Encourage your children to sort by just color, just shape, or by color and shape. Have them create their own categories and sort how they desire. Be sure to have them tell you how they sorted them and how they came up with that category. Categorizing and comparing objects is essential for both math and literacy development.
- Mix all the colors together!
Okay, for some it is a pet peeve to mix the different colors of play dough, but what a great experiment to see what will happen if you did mix the colors together. Ask your children to predict what they think will happen, and then do it! Ask questions during the activity such as: What is happening to the colors?, Why do you think the colors are looking this way?, and What will happen if we continue to squish them together? Take before, during, and after pictures to document the process. After the colors are mixed, ask your children if they can separate them again? Why or why not? Encourage a lot of dialogue and ask plenty of questions to get their minds turning while doing this activity. Doing basic science experiments like this will encourage exploration and thinking outside of the box!
These activities are simple and fun, but they are also educational and academic! Children need hands on experiences, even when learning the ABCs, 123s, and more! What else, besides play dough, can you use to create academic and engaging learning experiences for children? The possibilities are endless!


Human body worksheets - softschools., Human body worksheets and quizzes human body worksheets and human body quizzes. Human body muscle diagram, A fully labelled human body muscle diagram. 4 fantastic large size (a4) labeled human body muscular system pictures for you to download, print and then photocopy. A kid' guide life sciences -- human body systems, A kid's guide to life sciences: the human body systems. human anatomy is the study of the systems of the body which is made up of cells, tissues, and organs..
Respiratory system lesson plan, teaching human body, Human body respiratory system lesson plan anatomy function parts physiology science primary teaching learning students elementary education curriculum. http://www.instructorweb.com/lesson/respiratorysystem.asp Human anatomy enchantedlearning., Human anatomy enchantedlearning.. enchantedlearning. user-supported site. bonus, site members access banner-ad-free version . http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/anatomy/titlepage.shtml The skeletal system theme unit - printables worksheets, Skeletal system puzzles (grades 4-5) customize printables - edit save words definitions (edhelper. subscribers) (grades 6-7) customize printables. http://www.edhelper.com/skeletal_system.htm


An edited collection describing key issues in supporting literacy development, this book helps to 'unlock' the mysteries behind helping children learn to read, write, speak and listen. It explores ways to help children develop their skills in literacy, thinking and learning, and shows how literacy teaching can be used creatively and imaginatively with children of all ages and abilities. The new edition of this well-known text:
Interweaving pedagogy with theory and practical suggestions, this book is firmly based in classroom and academic research to support both trainee and practising teacher in the realities of teaching and learning in literacy.
Creative Ways to Share Reading. Using Poetry With Young Children. Using Poetry With Older Children. Word Level Work Including Phonics, Vocabulary and Spelling. Teaching Grammar and Knowledge About Language. Learning to Write and Writing to Learn. Drama. Speaking and Listening. Inclusion and EAL. ICT - Incredibly Creative Tools. Visual Literacy and Multimedia. Planning and Assessing Progress in Literacy


The Metropolitan Museum of Art (aka: “The Met”) is located in New York City. It is the largest art gallery / museum in the United States and one of the 10 largest in the world. Its permanent collection contains more than 2 million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 by a group of American citizens. The founders included businessmen and financiers, as well as leading artists and thinkers of the day who wanted to open a museum to bring art and art education to the American people. It opened on February 20, 1872, and was originally located at 681 Fifth Avenue.
- The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan’s ‘Museum Mile’, is by area one of the world’s largest art galleries.
- There is also a much smaller second location at “The Cloisters” in Upper Manhattan that features medieval art.
Represented in the permanent collection are works of art from classical antiquity and Ancient Egypt; paintings and sculptures from nearly all the European masters; and an extensive collection of American and modern art.
- ‘The Met‘ also maintains extensive holdings of African, Asian, Oceanic, Byzantine, and Islamic art.
- The museum is also home to encyclopedic collections of musical instruments, costumes and accessories and antique weapons and armor from around the world.
- Several notable interiors, ranging from 1st-century Rome through modern American design are permanently installed in the ‘Met’s‘ galleries.
If you have not yet met ‘The Met‘ you better get set to do so – for this, you will not regret!


"I'm passionate about the woods and I want to pass that appreciation on to our children."
You're just as likely to find Jane Thornes teaching under open skies as in her walled classroom in St. Maries, Idaho.
"You have to get outside to learn about outside," says the environmental educator who has been teaching elementary
school students for more than 20 years.
Thornes and her husband Jim live and work on their 270-acre family forest, Pettis Peak Tree Farms, Thornes leads forest
tours and classes, which have become favorite activities for her third and fourth graders as well as with Scout troops and
diverse groups from surrounding communities.
Here, audiences experience first-hand the many activities involved in sustaining a working forest. "They've been
pretty popular over the years," says Thornes. "We show visitors the process of pre-commercial thinning, the piling
and burning of slash, even how to set chokers and we appreciate the opportunity to give people a better
understanding of the work that goes into a well-managed forestland.
There are lots of roads you can take to become an environmental educator, but a good grounding in life
sciences such as biology, chemistry and ecology certainly help.
"My first degrees were in sociology and biology and then I went back to school to get my elementary education
degree," she explains. "But the most important thing is to read, explore, get outside and not be afraid to follow
Thornes knows that real life experiences are the best lessons. After noticing dead and dying
Subalpine Fir trees along a highway, she worked with the U.S. Forest Service to identify the
balsam wooly adelgid as the likely cause. It was also the perfect opportunity to involve her
students in a valuable research project.
"The kids learned that this tiny, aphid-like insect spreads to Grand Fir trees, a valuable
timber species in our area," explains Thornes. She challenged and inspired her
students to collect scientific data from site study plots, information that the
U.S. Forest Service can use as it addresses the problem.
Thornes has been a facilitator for Project Learning Tree (the gold standard in
environmental education programs in schools across the country) since
1999, instructing forestland owners, other teachers from Idaho, and
Girl Scout leaders from the United States, Canada, and the
"I've been lucky to have lived in the woods for 34 years and I've always
enjoyed the outdoors. It doesn't get much better than being outside,
in a beautiful setting and helping others to learn and teach about
our natural resources."
Year after year, Thornes receives recognition and awards for her
work. In 2006, Project Learning Tree named her one of five
finest environmental educators in the nation. In 2007
she was recognized as Idaho's elementary environmental
educator of the year by The Idaho Environmental
Thornes, however, prefers to talk about her students' work.
"It's very exciting and satisfying to receive recognition for
the teaching work," she explains, "but my most exciting
moments are when I see the light go on as a young
person discovers a passion for nature and know I
helped turn the switch."
Recently, one of her former 4th grade students,
now heading off to college, told Thornes that
her classes, field trips and activities led her
to choose biology as her major. "I can't tell
you how excited I was," she enthuses.
That's worth more than all the awards
in the world!"
Want to know more?
º What is Environmental Education? (PLT):
º North American Association for Environmental Education:
º Idaho Environmental Education Association:
º Every Student Learns Outside (PLT):
º Project Learning Tree:
º Idaho Project Learning Tree:
º Project Wet:
º Project Wild:
º Idaho Forest Owners Association:
Click for larger image:
Idaho Forest Products Commission
© All rights reserved.


Teresa Fisher, Sanville Elementary School, VA, has been using LNS to help her students overcome a common problem: fear or hatred of maths.
Outline of the Problem
In surveys of elementary and junior high school students regarding most disliked subjects, Math invariably comes out top. Aside from the survey numbers, this can also be seen in students’ attitude to classroom and homework tasks, interaction with the teacher, and student progress reports/grades. Many students cram to pass exams without even understanding why math is important or necessary, and Math still has the highest failure rate of any subject at school-leaving level.
And yet, many small children are happy to profess their love of numbers, counting from one to hundred or singing songs involving numbers in front of others without fear of shame or embarrassment. Why does math seem to inspire fear and intimidation in so many older learners and adults? What happens to change these happy-go-lucky kids into grumbling, reluctant teenagers who roll their eyes and complain “I hate math”, “I’m not good at math” or “I don’t need to know math”?
Like language learning, math is sequential or cumulative in nature. This means that if students have not mastered the previous material they will have trouble progressing to the next step as it typically requires knowledge of the preceding syllabus. Then there is the ingrained belief that math is only about getting to the one “right answer”. Another common problem is the inability to connect seemingly abstract math concepts to the real world.
And yet, math is present all around us every day! Not only is it vital in many other school subjects such as science, sociology, and technology, but it is also connected directly or indirectly to many careers such as engineering, programming, and accounting. With this in mind, it’s important for teachers to try and help students to beat their “math-phobia” and unlock their true potential. How can they do this?
Teachers can help students to confront and overcome their “math-phobia” in a number of ways . For example, by using cooperative math problem-solving activities, increasing allotted time for reviewing previous material, actively connecting math concepts to real life, and providing a sufficient supply of specialized materials such as calculators, graph paper and scrap paper for working out. Another powerful method is to leverage the benefits of recent technological advances such as tablet-based apps for classroom usage.
LNS can be used to set math tasks, collect answers instantly and privately, and compare multiple students’ answer on a split screen while connected to a smartboard, projector or Apple TV. Teachers can also share the contents of their tablet screen with students in real time even without a projector, etc. when explaining the answer. It’s also possible to conceal students’ names when showing and comparing answers, so no one will feel embarrassed or ashamed even if they answered wrongly or couldn’t answer at all.
Teresa Fisher has been using LNS for practice math problems in her class of 35 students. Teresa likes to set students a challenge using their problem-solving ability and natural curiosity, not to mention competitiveness:
“I like to put up two different answers for the students to compare and determine which is right and which is incorrect.”
Students often find math theory and terminology hard to grasp, but through “learning by doing” they can steadily gain proficiency in basic math which will benefit them throughout their student and working life.
LoiLoNote School Application
- Speed up the learning process: Traditionally, keeping a close eye on students’ math progress was a time-consuming process involving manually collecting their workbooks and individually checking each student’s working out. LNS speeds up the process of setting, collecting, marking and returning work. Teachers can lighten the load by asking students to take a photo of their notes or to send their answer back using LNS’s multimedia Cards or direct teacher Tunnel.
- Know your students’ needs: In large classes it’s often hard to determine and attend to the needs of individual students. For example, it’s not possible to check if students actually solved the task you gave them or just waited until the correct answer was revealed. With LNS, students are “forced” to have a go, since it’s immediately clear on the teacher’s tablet who’s submitted an answer. Regular practice and tailor-made private support will gradually reduce the “fear barrier”.
- Analyse progress to motivate students: Past student work, including answers and feedback received from the teacher, is all stored securely within LNS, automatically generating a “math portfolio”. This can be referred back to by both students and teachers to review previous material and analyse progress, providing evidence for evaluation for teachers and increasing motivation for students.


Today many schools and districts require that daily objectives be posted in classrooms, even if they don't, it's a best practice. These mini-posters are a cute and convenient way to post your standards.
All Kindergarten Math Standards are in student friendly wording with cute tree themed backgrounds. The mini-posters can be posted on white boards, bulletin boards, or the wall.
Clickable Table of Contents
Four different options for bulletin board headers for ELA
Four different options for bulletin board headers for Math
All sub-standards for Math including:
Counting and Cardinality
Operations and Algebraic Thinking
Numbers and Operations in Base Ten
Measurement and Data
All sub-standards for ELA including:
Reading Foundational Skills
Reading Informational Text
Speaking and Listening
Just need ELA? Click the link below
Just need Math? Click the link below
Looking for a different theme to match your classroom? Or a different grade level? Send me a special request!


music education resources
Check out our You-Tube clips for early stage
Thank You - to all of our regular visitors... and welcome to those browsing here for the first time.
The exercises below are provided in .pdf (Acrobat format) for both PC & Mac users.
For a guide to what is
included in each section, click on the
red links provided above each table.
These groupings correspond to no particular established system - it's just a way to help visitors find their way around. The terms, 'Single' and 'Grand' refer to the staves offered. Single stave examples could also be used for string and wind instruments or even for singing at sight. Grand Stave is a term often used to describe piano music laid out on two connected staves. Examples marked (LS) are printed in Landscape.
|First Steps (click HERE for details)||Early Stages (click HERE for details)|
|Sheet No.||Staves||Sheet No.||Staves||Sheet No.||Staves||Sheet No.||Staves|
|FS 1||FS 11||Ely 1||Ely 11|
|FS 2||FS 12||Ely 2||Ely 12|
|FS 3||FS 13||Ely 3||Ely 13|
|FS 4||FS 14||Ely 4||Ely 14|
|FS 5||FS 15||Ely 5||Ely 15|
|FS 6||FS 16||Ely 6||Ely 16|
|FS 7||FS 17||Ely 7||Ely 17|
|FS 8||FS 18||Ely 8||Ely 18|
|FS 9||FS 19||Ely 9||Ely 19|
|FS10||FS 20||Ely 10||Ely 20|
|Intermediate (click HERE for details)||Advanced (click HERE for details)|
|Sheet No.||Exercises||Sheet No.||Exercises||Sheet No.||Exercises||Sheet No.||Exercises|
|Int 1||Int 7||Adv 1|
|Int 2||Int 8||Adv 2|
|Int 3||Int 9||Adv 3|
|Int 4||Int 10||Adv 4|
|Int 5||Int 11||Adv 5|
|Int 6||Int 12||Adv 6|
|Advanced +||Bach Chorales|
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(As numbered in the Reimenschneider catalogue)
If you need to, you can obtain a free copy of Adobe Acrobat
|Click on the
Acrobat Reader logo to access the Adobe site.
You will be able to select options from there.
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Who doesn’t love music? But more importantly have you ever met a preschool kid who didn’t love to ‘get jiggy with it’ (sorry I had to) to a good tune? I haven’t yet. Music education shouldn’t begin and end when students go to their music class, rather music should be all around them in the classroom. I love using music to enhance my lesson plans and use them during transitions, which are typically a little challenging for little ones.
Below I’ve listed some benefits the Center for Children and Families in Norman noted.
1. Improves memory:
“Further research has shown that participation in music at an early age can help improve a child’s learning ability and memory by stimulating different patterns of brain development” -Eduardo Maruret, Conductor of Miami Symphony Orchestra
2. Helps develop language and reasoning
Basic knowledge of music and early training help develop the part of the brain associated with language, reasoning, and retention of information.
3. Promotes emotional development and empathy
Music can be an excellent resource for people who may have trouble verbalizing their emotions. This is especially beneficial to younger kinds. Incorporating activities that could help expand their vocab and the understanding of the emotional context of the music would be amazing to their development as young people.
4. Helps with pattern recognition
Student could benefit in almost every academic aspect with the development of pattern recognition.
5. Auditory skills
A well known advantage of training in the musical arts is acute auditory skills. Linguistically, students will develop a sense of tone and “information bearing elements in sounds” which will help with communication as their vocabulary expands.


There are many studies that prove Arts learning is linked to positive student outcomes such as engagement and persistence, overall academic achievement, communication and collaboration, and positive behavior.
On July 26, 2012, our U.S. Representatives agreed by passed a resolution designating the second week of September as Arts in Education Week to promote and show the importance of art education in making engaged and successful students.
The resolution states:
Arts education, comprising a rich array of disciplines including dance, music, theatre, media arts, literature, design, and visual arts, is a core academic subject and an essential element of a complete and balanced education for all students.
There are also many Art in Education websites dedicated to prove the importance of the arts in the classroom. The websites listed below work together to inform parents, students and teachers of activities to engage students in the classroom this week and throughout the year.
K-12 Curriculum Resources
The Art and Science of Impressionist Color
Students will learn about the Impressionist painters’ use of color and how it connected to early-19th-century scientific theories about color. They will explore combinations of primary and secondary colors, experiment creating secondary colors, and create a landscape using complementary colors.
Creating Comic Strips
Starting with the familiar Peanuts comic strip characters in the form of video and print media, students explore comic strips as a form of communication of both fiction and nonfiction. In this lesson, each student creates an original comic strip to convey a mathematical concept to share with a younger student.
21st Century Skills Map ( PDF, 2.5 MB, 17 pgs.)
This Skills Map from the Partnership of 21st Century Skills (P21) presents just a few of the many ways that children acquire 21st Century Learning Skills through arts study.
(List compiled by the National Education Association. For more information visit www.nea.com)
Get the facts about the benefits of arts learning for students and teachers. Visit ArtsEdSearch.org, a first-of-its-kind clearinghouse of arts education research, to learn more about these and other benefits of arts learning for teachers and students.
Find out what is going on in your school, district, and state. What are the policies in place in your community that either support or hinder student access and participation in arts learning? You can use the Arts Education State Policy Database to find out information about your state. This searchable database contains the latest information on arts education state policies and practices. Since 1999, AEP has gathered these data through an annual survey of arts education personnel in state education agencies in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
(Thanks to the Arts in Education Partnership. For more ways to get involved, visit http://www.aep-arts.org.)


Youngsters who can lick their lips, blow bubbles and pretend that a building block is a car are most likely to find learning language easy, according to a new study funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Psychologists at Lancaster University, led by Dr Katie Alcock, found strong links between these movement, or motor and thinking, or cognitive, skills and children's language abilities.Speech therapists and pediatricians have known about a link between motor skills and language for some time. In fact, speech therapists use motor skill development games (e.g. the game with the small fish that move around and the minature fishing pole with a magnetic 'hook') in their sessions with children for that reason. It appears to me that the unique bit in this study is probably the correlation between the specific motor skills involving the mouth (i.e. blowing bubbles) and speaking. This make intuitive sense, of course.
So, this is indeed a study result that children can be happy about - chewing bubble gum is good for development!
(Hat tip: ScienceDaily)
PS. As a general point, please remember that finding a link is not the same thing as finding causality. In other words, two things can be related but not caused by each other but instead by something completely different. Statistically discovered "links" can also be due to coincidence if the study is not constructed carefully. More study is usually needed to reach the point where cause and effect are understood.


Today marks the start of World Nursery Rhyme Week (7-11 November).
Here at Aston Childcare we love reading nursery rhymes. One of our all time favourites is Incy Wincy Spider which is evident from its well worn spine! We also have a lovely copy of Row Row Row Your Boat complete with sound button. We also have a fantastic book and CD by Roger Priddy which has 22 nursery rhymes – Hey Diddle Diddle, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Mary Mary Quite Contrary, Hickory Dickory Dock, Little Jack Horner, The Queen of Hearts, Little Bo Beep, Little Miss Muffet, This Little Piggy, Rock-A-Bye-Baby, Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush, Old Mother Hubbard, Pat a Cake, Yankee Doodle, Jack and Jill, Humpty Dumpty, Sing a Song of Sixpence, Pussy Cat, Baa Baa Black Sheep, Three Little Kittens, There was an Old Woman and finally, Goosey Goosey Gander.
Here are just ten reasons why nursery rhymes are so great for children’s learning –
- Young children are naturally ‘wired’ for sound and rhythm. Besides providing enjoyment, singing nursery rhymes play an important role in language and literacy development. Toddlers begin to experiment with grammatical ‘rules’ and various rhyming patterns when they sing – skills that will prove useful when learning to read.
- Singing nursery rhymes can help children to develop emergent literacy skills. Many are repetitive which can support the development of memory and kickstart the practice of listening and speaking.
- Nursery Rhymes provide great practice with one to one word correspondence and early reading. Children tend to memorise rhymes fairly easily so many of them become successful at “reading” them.
- Singing nursery rhymes and other songs help children remember basic facts such as the order of letters in the alphabet, partly because songs tap into fundamental systems in our brains that are sensitive to melody and beat.
- Singing songs and rhymes are a critical component of ‘literacy disposition’ – the desire to read. Children find singing activities really enjoyable which helps disposition development because ultimately, disposition grows from positive experiences.
- Nursery rhymes are portable – they don’t need to be ‘plugged in’! They can be enjoyed at any time and anywhere. Sing them in the playground, at dinner time, bath time and when children are getting ready for bed. Children love rhymes – they cannot resist joining in.
- Rhymers are readers. “If a child knows 8 nursery rhymes by heart by the time they are 4 years old, they are usually among the best readers and spellers in their class by the time they are 8”. M. Fox, Reading Magic.
- Nursery rhymes are sophisticated literary devices. Think of the alliteration in ‘Goosey, Goosey Gander’ or the onomatopoeia in ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ and rhyme in ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’.
- Nursery rhymes are a powerful learning source in early literacy. They enable children to become interested in the rhythm and patterns of language.
- Nursery rhymes include 3 key elements: repetition, rhythm and rhyme – making them valuable language teaching tools.


Not only are these great activities to help develop kiddos’ fine motor skills, but it shows how connecting–putting things together–is a natural inclination for people.
I’ve found that among all of the comprehension strategies out there, connecting is one of the easiest for children to learn and for parents to model. It’s one that we do around here most often, without thinking, because it’s natural to try to figure out where we fit compared to the world around us.
Many important reading comprehension strategies can be taught to children even before children can read–they just take some solid modeling by parents and teachers during read alouds. Connecting, activating schema, questioning, predicting, visualizing, inferring, determining importance, or synthesizing, can all be taught in casual, relaxed–but meaningful–ways during the short span of a read aloud.
Here are a few ways parents can model for their children the reading comprehension strategy of making connections:
- Making Connections: Making connections is usually one of the first reading comprehension strategies that children do naturally when reading a text, since most young ones looove to talk about themselves.
When your daughter shouts, Mommy! I have the same pink tutu as Zoe! while reading a Sesame Street book, she’s making a connection. Your son is making a connection when he says, Hey! There’s a clown fish like Nemo! during your trip to the aquarium. When Arthur’s Family Vacation gets your kiddos reminiscing about your own family’s crazy beach trip, they’re all making connections.
Connecting allows readers to relate directly to the characters, events, or ideas in a text. When readers are able to draw a connection to a text, they’re more likely to remember what they’re reading, appreciate what they’re reading, and be more invested in what they’re reading. Connections can be personal (self-to-text), they can be between two texts (text-to-text), or they can be between the text and some other world event (text-to-world).
During read alouds, parents or teachers can model connection-making by saying something like:
- I remember feeling the same way when I lost my favorite lovie. . .
- Oh, Lilly is so excited about her purse, she just can’t stop talking about it. When you got your new shoes, you felt the same way! Remember, you wanted to tell everyone how happy you were. . .
- It’s sometimes difficult to try new things. Michael in this book is just like Taylor in the book we read yesterday. . .
- It looks like the people in this story are really struggling with litterbugs. We just worked hard to pick up the litter we found in our park. . .
- Remember how the girl in The Gardner sent letters to her family while she was away, the little boy in this book. . .
Connections are pretty easy to make, no matter the text. And modeling this strategy doesn’t have to be a huge, time-consuming endeavor. If one or two connections are made during one read aloud, that’s great. Our hope is that when emerging readers–and even toddlers or preschoolers–hear the adults in their lives making natural connections as they read, that the little ones, too, will make connections when they are the ones decoding the text.
And when readers make connections, they’re drawing themselves closer to the text which will ultimately help them to better understand what they read. Very simply, we’re hoping that our little ones will pick up on the habits of strong readers early on, and then they will naturally use these strategies on their own when they’re able. Pretty awesome, right?


♥ RESEARCH TITLE ♥
Wall of Evidence: Creating 3D Mural Paintings by Using an Experiential Learning in Visual Arts Education.
This study is carried out with aim to study the 3D Mural Paintings progress at Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Seksyen 16 Shah Alam, Selangor Darul Ehsan through an experiential learning. Based on early observation, researcher has found a gap the necessity to create the 3D Mural Paintings; therefore this activity provided students with some meaningful experience in education. Through further research and reading about the topic, researcher noticed that experience is one of the technique used in education system. Creating the 3D Mural Paintings at the school not only provides the visual experience to the students, it also gives some essential experienced to the visual arts teacher and researcher too. The existence of 3D Mural Paintings artwork in school helped students to examine their understandings about the 3D Mural Paintings development in experiential learning once the scientific study has conducted. This research implemented qualitative approach and all the data collected by three techniques which are interviews, observation and document analysis. All of the activities involved before and after the processes were analysed, interpreted, reported and evaluated properly. This research used a purposive sampling with 13 students from form 5.
1) To examine the understandings among secondary school students in creating 3D Mural Paintings for Visual Art Education.
2) To identify the enthusiasm of teacher and secondary school students in creating 3D Mural Paintings for Visual Art Education.
3) To study the impacts processes of 3D Mural Paintings by using experiential learning for teacher and secondary school students.
1) What are the understandings of 3D Mural Paintings in Visual Art Education for the secondary school students?
2) How does the teacher and secondary school student portray their enthusiasm in 3D Mural Paintings?
3) What are the impacts processes of 3D Mural Paintings by using experiential learning for teacher and secondary school students?


Access to Schooling in Rural Areas: A Case of Selected Villages of Rajasthan
HISTORICALLY, in the educational system in India, facilities were provided in the developed regions of the country, namely, the three presidencies (Bengal, Madras, Bombay) which enjoyed higher rates of industrial investment, commercial modernisation and economic development. In these areas, literacy and levels of education were far ahead of the hinterland. The aim of the educational policy was to develop English education among Indians, preferably from the upper socio-economic strata of society, who could assist the rulers in subordinate posts in the bureaucracy, in governing the vast and diverse sub-continental empire. The colonial rulers of course were not interested in educating Indians beyond a certain level which was necessary for the continuance of their rule. The net result was that disparities in education become glaring between regions, between urban and rural areas and between developed and backward sections of society.
With the advent of independence, the proclaimed national objective in education was to develop rapidly a system of countrywide education responsive to the mass awakening in the country and befitting an independent nation in the modern age of science and technology. Universal free elementary education, removal of adult illiteracy, special attention to the socially and economically backward sections of society (scheduld castes and scheduled tribes) were to be some of the main considerations.
Since independence the educational system has undergone considerable expansion. Enrolment has increased more than four times at the primary stage, six times at the middle stage, seven times at the higher secondary and more than ten times at the university stage. There has been a correspoding increase in the number of teachers, institutions and expenditure on education.
In spite of all this expansion of educational facilities the present position in education after more than three decades of independence can hardly be satisfactory. Between 1951 and 1981 the percentage of literacy has crawled from 16.6 to 36.17 per cent-ónot


We moved in December of last year and one of the things I was determined not to miss were the beautiful sunflowers that we grew in our tiny garden. So, this past weekend we planted sunflower seeds all along our new back fence. I can’t wait to see them come up! But, just in case they don’t bloom as I hope, here are 10 sunflower crafts for kids that will add some yellowy sunshine to our house nonetheless. They’re a great round-up of quick and easy kids’ crafts!
10 Quick Sunflower Crafts for Kids
1. Felt Sunflower
I love this one and even though it does use hot glue, it’s absolutely adorable. It would be a great teen craft!
2. Stamped Sunflower Craft with Sunflower Seeds
I’m all about using different textures in crafts, so the addition of the sunflower seeds on this one makes it especially fun!
3. Sunflower Leaf Craft
The science-geek in me is psyched about the use of leaves as the sunflower petals in this craft. If you can’t find yellow leaves (might be the wrong season!), you can paint the leaves you do have or even use tissue paper.
4. Handprint Sunflower
We did a handprint 4th of July wreath one year when the kids were young and it’s so neat to see the comparison of their hands today. This sunflower handprint craft gives you the same opportunity to create a cherished decoration.
5. Summer Sunflower Craft
All you need for this beautiful sunflower is some construction paper, tissue paper, and glue!
6. Sunflower Craft
The depth of this flower comes from it’s folded petals! It’s perfect for helping little learners practice their fine motor skill development!
7. Count and Clip Sunflower
Part math activity, part craft, these counting sunflowers are fun and adorable!
8. Paper Plate Sunflower
This simple, quick and easy kids’ craft is the perfect ode to a summer sunflower!
9. Bubble Sunflower Art Craft
Using bubbles to paint? Yes, please! This sunflower craft for kids is a sure kid-pleaser!
10. Sunflower Sensory Bin
Sensory bins are magical crafty bins for little learners! This sunflower-themed sensory tub lets kids experience the fun of all things sunflower.
Do you have a favorite sunflower craft for kids? Share it with us below!


The Introduction to Environment Rating Scales is a three part course consisting of several lectures. The focus of Part 1 is to introduce learners to the history and development of the Environment Rating Scales, explain how Environment Rating Scales are structured, provide an overview of the Infant/Toddler and Early Childhood Environment Rating Scales, and to provide an overview of the space and furnishings and personal care routines subscales. In Part 2, learners will be introduced to the Quality Start System for Louisiana, and the Social Emotional Subscales, and their importance in assessing quality in early childhood programs. The major focus of Part 3 is to introduce learners to the process of scoring the ERS, and what to expect prior, during, and after and ERS evaluation.
After completing all three parts of this training, learners should understand not only the reasoning behind and research that supports the Environment Rating Scales, but also gain an understanding about how the scales are organized, and how they can be utilized in helping child care providers set up classroom environments that foster active learning, health, and safety; thus improving the quality of early care and education programs for young children.
This course is worth 3 training credit hours.
Dedicated early childhood educator—resourceful and goal driven professional early childhood educator with a solid commitment to the social-emotional and academic growth development of every child. Over 20 years of experience in both classic classroom environments as well as external classroom. Served the needs of diverse and culturally, racially, socio-economic, and special needs children/families.
Establish high expectations for students—continuously seek out new ways to improve instruction and link learning to practical use in everyday activities; equip students/parents/educators with the tools, resources, and knowledge to exceed individual goals. Expert interpersonal skills; build a strong bond with students, parents and colleagues to inspire a shared commitment to quality child care and education. Passion for children, teaching, and learning.
Specialties: Triple P Practitioner; Nurturing Parenting; PITC; The CLASS Tool observer; CDA Professional Development Specialist; NAEYC Accreditator
Romney Manuel has many years of experiences in the early childhood field. Mr. Manuel also has a vast amount of experience using reliable and valid assessment tools to evaluate the effectiveness of early childhood programs. Romney currently works at the Louisiana Department of Education (LDE) in the Division of Early Childhood. At LDE, Mr. Manuel serves as Program Consultant where he works with Child Care Providers, and Resource/Referral Agencies who provide trainings, technical assistance, and referrals for child care providers and for families of young children. He has also provided professional development to early childhood teachers and administrators throughout the state of Louisiana, and has presented at local, and state, and national conferences.
Tracy has a B.A. in Elementary Education from the University of West Florida and has taught Pre-K 3 and 4, as well as Kindergarten and first grade. She has been a director of a Class A center and a Class B center.
Tracy started working for Child and Family Network in 2008. Her work includes CDA classes, technical assistance, general early childhood training, child care referrals, and working with centers to understand the Department of Children and Family Services initiatives such as Quality Start, Tracking Of Time System (TOTS), and Licensing Requirements.


Creating letter B with play dough activity for preschoolers and toddlers - fine motor skill practice:: pinningwithpurpose.
Science for Kids: Making Straw Rockets ~ BuggyandBuddy.com
Montessori-inspired activities using free printables with wooden cubes (post uses Spielgaben cubes) for preschoolers through elementary-age kids
Might need to make these for the summer! For those days when we all just need a break but don't want it to turn into TV time!
Rainbow colour sorting busy bag. Busy bag ideas for kids. Hands on learning. Preschool activities. Learning and Exploring Through Play.
15 Independent Activities for One Year Olds - Imperfect Homemaker
These fall button tree quiet boxes are great for preschoolers. Perfect for counting, sorting, and strengthening fine motor skills too!
Cotton Ball Painting Craft Idea for Kids
This is ideal for kids of all ages! 29 of the MOST creative crafts and activities for kids!
This article is a great source forTONS of fun inexpensive, easy and interesting ideas for kids to keep busy.


Note: To protect the privacy of our members, e-mail addresses have been removed from the archived messages. As a result, some links may be broken.
( I am a student of Bachelor of Education at Griffith University in
Australia. I have a presentation to give on the topic "Teaching
Creativity in the Classroom". This topic is aimed at students in g
ades four to seven).
You might try the Australian Institute of Art Education journal in
and look at some of the conference material from this organization
The earlier work of Edward De Bono is children oriented. The
Victorian Curriculum document "Artmaps... 1986" has some good ideas
too. Why not go and find the Art Education lecturers in your
university and talk to them. Some of your Science Education people
too should be able to help you.
I don't know if you can "teach" creativity but you can make people
aware of their creative potential. It is positive attitudes towards ideas
which need to be encouraged and tolerance to new or unusual ideas
which need to be fostered.


March 14, 2018
2:00 PM Eastern Time
This session is sponsored by Nemours Bright Start!
Dual language learners (DLLs), one of the largest growing populations in the U.S., will enter classrooms with little to no exposure to the English language. To successfully, gain proficiency in English, they will require explicit and systematic instruction in both the home language and the new language. Are you familiar with strategies that support DLLs in each stage of language development? Are you creating purposeful and intentional learning experiences that foster English language acquisition?
Based on the planning guide, 10 Best Practices for Developing Book Experiences for Dual Language Learners, this webinar will support early childhood educators as they improve overall academic success with language and literacy development. Join Vera Meyerholtz as she explores simple and effective tips designed to differentiate instruction, engage dual language learners in critical thinking, strengthen the use of newly learned words and promote literacy development during an interactive book experience. Learn to create purposeful and intentional books experiences that offer dual language learners many opportunities to:
• build receptive and expressive vocabulary skills
• develop comprehension skills
• participate in back-and-forth conversation
• become a part of the story
• excite creativity and imaginations
• connect new ideas and concepts to personal experiences
I. Create book experiences that are culturally and developmentally appropriate for dual language learners
II. Maximize opportunities for language and literacy development before, during and after a book experience
III. Apply proven strategies to ensure improved achievement among listening, speaking and comprehension skills
IV. Develop instructional activities that include and support dual language learners
All sessions are 1.5 hours long, and include a brief announcement from our sponsor.
2:oo PM – 3:30 PM Eastern Time.
To ensure you receive confirmation and reminder emails, add email@example.com to your contacts list. If you do not receive your email confirmation, check your Spam or Junk mail folders in your email system.
Can’t participate in our webinars at the appointed time? Never fear! All of the webinars are recorded. To view the recording, simply register now and you will receive an email with a link to the recording when it is ready to be viewed. You can still download the certificate by watching the recording to the end when the certificate link is announced and displayed on the screen.
Only 1,000 people at one time can attend our webinars, but registration often tops 4,000. Only the first 1,000 people to click the link to attend the webinar will be able to get in. We start the webinars 30 minutes in advance of the start time. Arrive early to make sure you get in.
Please be advised that you will only be eligible for the great door prizes if you participate in the live session.
You can earn .2 CEUs for each webinar. The cost is $15 paid to University of Oklahoma online when you apply. Learn more here: Continuing Education Units (CEUs) from University of Oklahoma


Small Groups for Language Learning
Research shows that small group caregiver-led activities are more effective in developing cognitive, language and literacy skills than the large group activities that are usually a part of the daily preschool program.
Traditional large group circle times don’t always meet the unique developmental needs of each child. In order to develop high-level language skills, children need more opportunities to be engaged in small reading groups.
Acting out and extending the story into play activities helps children understand the vocabulary in the story and to develop language skills. Children also need ample opportunities for boisterous, physical play to act out and integrate what they learn.
Dialogic Reading is a great way to support language and literacy development in small groups or on a one-to-one basis.
What is Dialogic Reading?
How we read to children is as important as how frequently we read to them. Dialogic reading is essentially an adult and a child having a conversation about a book. Dialogic reading is an approach developed by Dr. Grover Whitehurst. Dialogic reading encourages the adult to engage the child to become the teller of the story. The adult becomes the listener, the questioner, and the audience for the child. Over time, the adult reads less and less of the text and the child takes over as the leader while talking about the story.
Why Dialogic Reading?
Children learn most from books when they are actively involved in the story.
Dr. Whitehurst’s research indicates that children who have been read to dialogically are significantly ahead of children who have been read in the usual way, on language development tests.
Reading to children in small groups and encouraging them to talk about the story results in more:
- talk and longer sentences than occurs in the typical story time
- turn taking
- opportunities to develop higher level language through thinking and imagining.
To find out more about Dialogic Reading go to:


What factors in America’s Black community/subculture play an important role that makes it difficult to achieve functional literacy?
Poverty Rate by Race/Ethnicity [Source: Kaiser Family Foundation]:
Single Parent Households by race [Source: Kids Count.org]
American Indian: 53%
Hispanic or Latino: 42%
Asian or Pacific Islander: 17%
The National Center for Fair and Open Testing says, “The powerful impact of poverty on literacy development has been well documented. Children of poverty, in addition to the obvious problems they face, have very little access to reading material ; they have fewer books in the home, inferior public libraries, inferior school libraries, and inferior classroom libraries, (e.g. Duke, 2000; Neuman and Celano, 2001). This means, of course, that they have fewer opportunities to read, and therefore make less progress in developing literacy.”
“Children from broken families [meaning one-parent families. I understand from my research that the term broken families is not politically correct in the United States at this time] are nearly five times more likely to suffer damaging mental troubles than those whose parents stay together, Government research has found. It also showed that two parents are much better than one if children are to avoid slipping into emotional distress and anti-social behaviour. The findings say that children’s family backgrounds are as important—if not more so—than whether their home is poor, workless, has bad health, or has no one with any educational qualifications.” Source: Daily Mail.co.uk
Continued on September 27, 2013 in Starting school at age seven—some claim—would be better: Part 5 or return to Part 3
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.
His latest novel is the award winning Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.
And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to kill Americans.
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At times you or your teachers might be looking for something extra to engage students or to extend students who finish their work early, or maybe you’re looking for a quick way to promote a new book on your Library webpage. While comic strip creation is probably more appealing to younger students, some can be quite clever, and this might be just the creative outlet that some older students enjoy.
Read Write Think have developed a lesson plan for using cartoons to teach onomatopoeia, and they quote B.Norton on their website as saying:
“Comic books have had a motivating power in literacy development for children, especially young boys, since their introduction in the 1930s. This nontraditional type of literature – often dismissed by educators as superficial and shallow – is highly visual, contains complex literary elements, and lends itself to critical examination of moral, ethical, and social issues.”
Also, Andrew Churches, in his Educational Origami Wiki says:
Here are some of the comic creation resources Andrew has put together:
In her blog Adventures in Educational Blogging, Susan Sedro gives a very good comparison of the advantagess and disadvantagess of 3 different online cartoon creators – MakeBeliefsComix, StripCreator and ToonDoo.
ToonDoo seems to be the one best set up for use in the classroom. It offers a secure site for educators – but it will cost you. However, they are very flexible with options – the smallest time you can request is access for 1 month with 30 students and this will cost $8, or you can request access for a couple of years for the whole school. Even if you only subscribe for a month, this could be a great way to complement a unit of work you are doing in class.
For other ideas, see:
Teaching & Learning in the Digital Age http://marynabadenhorst.global2.vic.edu.au/comic-strips/
Bright Ideas – http://slav.global2.vic.edu.au/2008/12/18/toondoo/


Our long term curriculum plan follows that of the main school and this year is cycle B of the three year programme. This ensures that our topics are broad and balanced and that opportunities for integration are available.
We aim to make our curriculum as relevant to the children as possible, in terms of their needs and understanding. Our lessons are devised as relevant to the children as possible, in terms of their needs and understanding. Our lessons are devised to include lots of opportunities for turn taking, co-operation and rehearsal of vocabulary skills, sentence structure and phonetical knowledge.
Our classroom is set up with many areas of continuous provision, although these are often more guided than they would be ordinarily be in an early years setting. These areas include sand, small world, role play kitchen, construction, creative, reading area, writing and drawing and floor activities. We also always have a selection of adult led games and tasks ready for individual children to use under adult direction. These activities include fine motor games and tasks, jigsaws, computer learning games, pattern matching, threading, dominoes and a variety of learning games. During our morning sessions, at least one of our staff members will be working with children on an English or Maths activity. Our other team members will usually be working within the continuous provision areas in a variety of ways, scaffolding different levels of learning that focus on the development of different skills. Much of our learning takes place in a paired session or one to one basis.
During the afternoon, our curriculum aims to cover relevant elements of science, history, geography, music, PE, art, RE and PSHCE. We incorporate the children's individual speech therapy targets into our work too, through different areas of the curriculum and games.
There are opportunities and resources around the room for children to engage in other tasks that further develop their key skills in fine motor skills, numeracy and social skills. Here is Natalia, who worked independently to complete her Number Bond Sea Shells and Chandi, who worked with an adult to practice numeracy skills with Numicon.
One week we made strawberry and banana milkshakes and we have also made cupcakes!


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Does Music Make You Smarter?
Steven M. Demorest and Steven J. Morrison
Music Educators Journal
Vol. 87, No. 2, Special Focus: Music and the Brain (Sep., 2000), pp. 33-39+58
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. on behalf of MENC: The National Association for Music Education
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3399646
Page Count: 8
You can always find the topics here!Topics: Music education, Music students, Musical improvisation, Childrens songs, Music teachers, Vocal music, Musical register, Reasoning, Music, Children
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Music Educators Journal © 2000 MENC: The National Association for Music Education


Music, Women, and Pianos in Antebellum Bethlehem, Pennsylvania: The Moravian Young Ladies' Seminary
This volume documents not only the academic and music curricula offered at a distinguished seminary, but the importance of piano study from a sociological viewpoint, music making in a gendered environment, and performance opportunities available for nineteenth-century women. A comparison of the Seminary's curricula with that offered at the Moravian Nazareth Hall for men in nearby Nazareth confirms the Moravians' claim that women and men were equally intelligent; hence, women deserved a comparable education. Aimed at an audience of general readers as well as music scholars, Music, Women, and Pianos offers fresh insights into American upper-and middle-class gender roles, the origins of middle-class music instruction, and the importance of women's contribution to society. This book, which contains more than fifty illustrations, furnishes the historical, cultural, and educational material necessary for interdisciplinary study drawing on nineteenth-century American history, education, music education, and women's studies.
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Here is a great app for building literacy and numeracy skills in Pre-K and Kindergarten students. Mrs. Wilson highly recommends this app for iPads. You can download it for free through iTunes.
Do you ever get the feeling that your brain is hibernating? That, as surely as the snow falls, your gray matter has finished snacking on cerebral salmon and is now quietly snoozing in a cozy, dark cave? Alarmingly, there ARE days when the idiom, “Use it or lose it!”, rings uncomfortably true. Waking up is hard to do, but here’s a fun way to tease those brain cells back into action. Change the word WET to DRY by adding, dropping or changing one letter at a time. Score one point for each change, with the lowest total score winning. Want more? Try changing HOT to COLD; SLOW to FAST; UP to DOWN; IN to OUT. Need a hint to get started? Read more below.
How many leaves are there?
Estimate how many leaves are in the photo. First, divide the photo into an equal number of squares. Then count the number of leaves in one square. Multiply the number of leaves in the one square by the number of squares that you have. Your answer is your calculated estimation of the number of leaves in the picture. Read further to find out the answer to the estimation question. Continue reading


This resource helps teachers pass the required elementary subject exams for earning a teaching credential.
Because passing these tests is now required in many states, this book has been designed to address the essential time-management methods, essay and multiple-choice strategies, and content that test takers must master in order to pass any section of the exam. Unlike other preparation books, this one does not simply offer a copy of MSAT materials. Instead, the content, constructed-response and multiple-choice strategies, and special time-management models for the tests are all research based and tailored to cover each domain and content area of any of the exams.
This valuable new resource: Offers effective time-management models. Critical time-management models for taking the whole exam in one sitting or individually are fully explained. Presents the “real” scores required on each subtest. The book reveals the real scores required to pass each subtest and a method to achieve them. Demonstrates effective constructed-response. Eleven essential essays (language arts, social studies, science, math, and the humanities) are presented and dissected for candidates. Deconstructs multiple-choice questions. The multiple-choice section of the exam is challenging because many of the questions are lengthy, jargon-rich, or simply do not count toward one's score. Strategies are required and explained. Addresses each of the content areas from elementary education: language arts, history and social studies, science, mathematics, and as well as the humanities, including P.E., health, child development, and the arts.