LIFE@OSU

When working with young children age three through five, the most challenging task for teachers is to use as few directions as possible and create an environment for these energetic and bright minds to learn. Your lesson will be most effective if you know the interests of the children and can incorporate them with hands-on, self-directed activities that require the use of multiple developmental areas. What if a group of children in your classroom are fixated on dinosaurs, and won’t play with any other toys? You can create an activity for them to draw dinosaurs they see in books, or cut out dinosaurs they find in magazine articles you lay out for them. Have them count the pictures or talk about the differences to incorporate math, maybe while they are cutting talk about the history of dinosaurs to incorporate science, and the cutting and coloring of the pictures would incorporate their fine motor skills.

There you have it, a lesson that is self-directed and engages the child in many of the developmental areas in a way that is fun and exciting for them. It is such a blessing to work with these young minds. Simply observing them and what they do with the objects and activities set out in front of them can teach you so much about where they are developmentally, and what you can do to help scaffold them to a greater and deeper understanding of the world around them.

Holland Snider ‘10
Double Degree Program
Early Childhood Development HDFS and Elementary Education