Power To Explore

      The learning center strategy uses ten basic learning centers to address the countless objectives of American early childhood classrooms, attempting to develop the student’s social, emotional, physical, cognitive, and aesthetic abilities.

      Encourage independent use of learning centers with these quick and easy tips:

1. One Define the space. Use throw rugs, bookcases, and curtains to help children contain their play within the center.
2. Two Take a room tour. Start the year by taking a few children at a time on a quick tour of the centers. Show them where materials are and how to put them away.
3. Three Keep materials accessible. Put current materials for each center in well-defined containers and marked shelves at children's eye level.
4. FourStore a few teacher materials in each center. It takes too much time to have to search for your own materials. Place your materials on a high shelf in each area.
5. Five Stock centers sparingly. It is easier for children to manage materials if there are just a few items there. As children learn how to easily use and put materials away, ask them to suggest what new items they would like to add to the centers.
6. Six Set up portable centers. Use plastic tubs or bins to create portable centers children can take to a private area to work and play.
7. Seven Make a cooperative center rules chart. At a group time, encourage children to suggest rules for working/playing in learning centers. If children are having difficulty, suggest issues such as sharing materials, respecting eachother's work, and putting materials away.
8. Eight Display children's work. Use bulletin boards, shelf backs, cardboard boxes or room dividers as a place to show children what others have done in the center.
9. Nine Set up a works-in-progress shelf. Sometimes children don't have enough time to complete a project in a center. Create a "safe place" where children can store ongoing projects.
10. Ten Create a take-home box. Set out a box near the door for children to place their finished projects for take-home at the end of the day

      There are nine basic learning centers in an early childhood/elementary classroom, each structured to expand the students’ experiences in a variety of meaningful and effective ways. Each center is constructed to encompass numerous objectives, including state and federal standards, school standards, and community standards.

Many church nurseries and preschools acquire large collections of Legos for early learners; when partnered with a nice table and a few extra trays this will serve as a very nice building block center.

       The learning centers approach focuses on student autonomy by giving each student an opportunity to explore his learning environment hands-on in a developmentally appropriate classroom. Teachers act as facilitators, providing materials and guidance, as well as planning discussions, activities, demonstrations, and reviews around the learning centers. These should never be used entirely as the only form of teaching in a classroom setting. That being said, learning centers may be integrated into the daily curriculum of a typical preschool or kindergarten.

1. The art center both personal and multi-cultural visual expression. This center also supports many opportunities for core subject integration such as: science, math, literacy, and history.
2. The building block center is essential in a pre-kindergarten classroom. Students recreate structural environments and explore concepts taught through math, geometry, and sturctural engineering in this center.
3. A discovery center is often used to introduce children to nature and/or science.
4. Dramatic play centers promote social interaction, role exploration, and abstract thinking.
5. Library centers or literacy centers focus the student's attention upon a particular theme for the week's studies through type and pictures.
6. The muscle center engages students participate in activities that exercise their bodies and develop large and small motor skills.
7. Music centers creates opportunities for children to cooperate in activities that stimulate creativity, listening, and language. Children learn the natural intonations and rhythms of language here.
8. The table games center teaches children to explore an established set of rules.
9. Writing centers integrate the development of fine motor skills with self expression, reading, spelling and art. 
10. In the manipulative center children play either alone or with each other using small toys to explore identification skills, math, and also story making. This center has similar attributes found in building block centers and dramatic play centers, except that the scale of the toys and environments is much smaller. The child's perception is no longer in the form of role play as an equal to his piers. The child becomes the manipulator of a story or of elements that they can control apart from social engagement if they choose to do so.

      Below is a video depicting a wide variety of sensory table ideas. Sensory tables are often introduced into preschool and kindergarten centers by early childhood educators. Children learn to associate ideas with those memories developed through tactile learning as well as the visual. Smells are also integrated into sensory tables although the examples shown here focus primarily on the tactile.

Video by MyCreativeTeacher.com. Children use their senses to understand the world around them. Engaging in valuable experiences is important for building their overall development. Who says sensory tables are only for preschools? Get your child his or her own sensory table so that you can encourage them to investigate, learn and discover! 

More Related Articles:

• Learning Centers: Why They're Important 
• Creating Learning Centers in the Classroom  
• Writing Centers - Setting Up the Classroom Series 
• Literacy Centers 
• The Block Center
• Outside the Lines: Creating an Art Center in Your Classroom
• 10 Simple Centers to Connect Art and the Curriculum
• The Nuts and Bolts of Discovery Centers
• Dramatic Play Centers
• Inventing Music Play Centers (pdf)

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Stages of Artistic Development

      Visit http://thevirtualinstructor.com for more art lessons like this one. Learn the stages of artistic development and how knowing them will help your drawing improvement.

      As young students develop, their art passes through a number of stages. It is thought that all children pass through these stages:

a.) Scribbling: From about their first birthday children achieve the fine motor control to handle a crayon. At first they scribble. The youngest child scribbles with a series of left and right motions, later up, down and then circular motions are added. The child appears to get considerable pleasure from watching the line or the colors appear. Often however children do not pay attention to the edges of the page and the lines go beyond the confines of the page. Children are often also interested in body painting and, given the opportunity, will draw on their hands or smear paint on their faces.
      Later, from about their second birthday, controlled scribbling starts. Children produce patterns of simple shapes: circles, crosses and star-bursts. They also become interested in arrangement and can produce simple collages of colored paper, or place stones in patterns. Once children have established controlled scribbling they begin to name their scribbles.

b.) Pre-symbolism: From about age three, the child begins to combine circles and lines to make simple figures. At first, people are drawn without a body and with arms emerging directly from the head. The eyes are often drawn large, filling up most of the face, and hands and feet are omitted. At this stage it may be impossible to identify the subject of the art without the child's help.
      Later drawings from this stage show figures drawn floating in space and sized to reflect the child's view of their importance. Most children at this age are not concerned with producing a realistic picture.

c.) Symbolism: In this stage of a child's development, they create a vocabulary of images. Thus when a child draws a picture of a cat, they will always draw the same basic image, perhaps modified (this cat has stripes that one has dots, for example). This stage of drawing begins at around age five. The basic shapes are called symbols or schema.
      Each child develops his/her own set of symbols, which are based on their understanding of what is being drawn rather than on observation. Each child's symbols are therefore unique to the child. By this age, most children develop a "person" symbol which has a properly defined head, trunk and limbs which are in some sort of rough proportion.
      Before this stage the objects that child would draw would appear to float in space, but at about five to six years old the child introduces a baseline with which to organize their space. This baseline is often a green line (representing grass) at the bottom of the paper. The figures stand on this line. Slightly older children may also add secondary baselines for background objects and a skyline to hold the sun and clouds.
      It is at this stage that cultural influences become more important. Children not only draw from life, but also copy images in their surroundings. They may draw copies of cartoons. Children also become more aware of the story-telling possibilities in a picture. The earliest understanding of a more realistic representation of space, such as using perspective, usually comes from copying.

d.) Realism: As children mature they begin to find their symbols limiting. They realize that their schema for a person is not flexible enough, and just doesn't look like the real thing. At this stage, which begins at nine or ten years old, the child will lend greater importance to whether the drawing looks like the object being drawn.
      This can be a frustrating time for some children, as their aspirations outstrip their abilities and knowledge. Some children give up on drawing almost entirely. However others become skilled, and it is at this stage that formal artistic training can benefit the child most. The baseline is dropped and the child can learn to use rules such as perspective to organize space better. Story-telling also becomes more refined and children will start to use formal devices such as the comic strip.

The Owl by Tennyson

 THE OWL

When cats run home and light is come,

And dew is cold upon the ground,

And the far-off stream is dumb,

And the whirring sail goes round,

And the whirring sail goes round;

Alone and warming his five wits,

The white owl in the belfry sits.

When merry milkmaids click the latch,

And rarely smells the new-mown hay,

And the cock hath sung beneath the thatch

Twice or thrice his roundelay,

Twice or thrice his roundelay;

Alone and warming his five wits,

The white owl in the belfry sits.

Second Song--To The Same.

Thy tuwhits are lulled, I wot,

Thy tuwhoos of yesternight,

Which, upon the dark afloat,

So took echo with delight,

So took echo with delight,

That her voice, untuneful grown,

Wears all day a fainter tone.

I would mock thy chaunt anew:

But I cannot mimic it;

Not a whit of thy tuwhoo,

Thee to woo to thy tuwhit,

Thee to woo to thy tuwhit,

With a lengthened loud halloo,

Tuwhoo, tuwhit, tuwhit, tuwhoo-o-o

by Alfred Tennyson

How To Host a Pirate Party

Treasure-Map Invitations

       There’s hardly a lad whose heart doesn’t beat fast at the very thought of pirates and buried treasure. So for the invitation to this party, for boys of 7 years or more, cut a 12″ x 4″ piece of yellow construction or wrapping paper. Fold it in half.

       On the outside of the invitation, write the young host’s name and address, etc.: “Captain Bob Foster’s Birthday Party, 120 Valley Avenue, Blue Mountain, California, Friday, October 14th, 1955.”

       On the inside, at the left, draw a compass rose and map of Treasure Island; the dotted line leads to X, where the rhyme begins (see above).

       On the inside, at the right, write the rhyme; at the bottom, print the secret password and prick it at intervals with a pin. Add instructions on how to read it.

The Pirate’s Den

      Shipshape fittings: Place a sturdy box on each side of the doorway leading into the party room. Nail a broad 4′ plank across the top of them. Then hang a curtain or sheet in the doorway so it just touches the plank. Pirates must use the plank to enter the room.

       Cut out lots of pennants from bright-colored cotton yard goods. Staple them to a heavy cord; then string them in the party room, here and there or from high to low points.

       In the wall light fixtures, use red and green bulbs to simulate the port and starboard lights of a ship.

       Cut cardboard to fit over each window; paint it black; cut a circle from the center of each to resemble portholes; tape to windows.

Captain Morgan’s Table

It’s a swashbuckling setup: Use a picnic table with benches. Cover the table with a black cloth made of yard goods. Set the table with red paper napkins (a red rubber hatchet holds down each napkin) and red-handled picnic-type forks and knives. For plates, collect the metal-type plates on which frozen dinners come; with enamel paint, paint each white; when it’s dry, paint on a black Jolly Roger (skull-and-crossbones) insignia. Complete the setting with white china mugs (dollar-store variety).

Jolly Roger place cards: From thin white cardboard, cut 7″ x 3-1/2″ place cards. Fold in half; on each, outline Jolly Roger insignia, with top of insignia at fold. Cut out around top of insignia, as shown. Write name of pirate on each—Captain Kidd, Jean Lafitte, Captain Morgan, Long John Silver, Ben Gunn, etc.

Pirate-Garb Favors: Each young pirate receives a pirate hat (with white Jolly Roger insignia on it), an eye patch, and mustache, all made of black construction paper. The hat and patch are held on with hat elastic. A rubber dagger from the dime store and a red crepe-paper sash, cut from folds of crepe paper, complete the attire.

Galleon Centerpiece: Buy an 18″ black sailboat; remove cloth sails. Insert 3 wooden dowels of different lengths into holes in deck as shown. Make sails from stiff white paper; paint Jolly Roger insignia on one. Paste sails onto dowels as shown; with cord, attach 4 jib sails to bow of boat.

       Pile some rocks at far end of table; to these, secure the ship, letting it heel. Scatter colored pebbles about. To the masts, paste white and black pirate flags as shown. Station rubber pirate figures, in various poses, on deck and in tiny crow’s-nest (use a paper cup). Place a cork float at either end of the ship; into each, insert a large red candle.

Have a retro pirate party for your little buccaneer this year.

Seafaring Food

Twin Treasure Sandwich Chests

Pirate Treasure (Raw Relishes)

Ship Ahoy Ice Cream

Jolly Roger Cake – Cold Milk

Twin Treasure Sandwich Chests

2 loaves unsliced bread

Lettuce

Raw relishes

Sandwich fillings of tuna, deviled ham, etc

Chocolate “gold” coins

1. With long sharp knife, cut off 1/2″ slice from top of day-old loaf of bread, cutting almost but not all the way through and leaving hinge along long side.
2. Now, starting 1/4″ in from edge of crust and letting knife extend down to 1/4″ from bottom, cut all around inside of loaf.
3. Then insert knife into outside of long side of loaf, 1/4″ up from bottom crust and in from end, so that blade extends across width of loaf to within 1/4″ of crust on opposite side. Then saw across length of loaf to within of other end, so block of bread is completely loosened. Now lift out block.
4. Slice block of bread; then make it into sandwiches with tasty fillings of tuna, deviled ham, etc. Arrange sandwiches in chest, tucking lettuce here and there. Garnish chest with carrot curls, radish roses, celery sticks, and ripe olives (resembling jewels) ; add “gold” coins of sweet chocolate.
5. For second chest, repeat above.

Ship Ahoy Ice Cream

1. Make small square paper sails—2 for each ship. Insert narrow candy stick into each.
2. Quickly halve each very firm pint of brick ice cream into 2 lengthwise oblongs; cut corners from front end of each oblong to form bow of ship.
3. Into each oblong, insert 2 candy-stick sails: then press 2 or 3 small round candies with holes in the center into each side for portholes.

Jolly Roger Cake

1. Fill and frost 2 9″ cake layers with 1 batch seven-minute frosting, or 1 pkg. fluffy white frosting mix, prepared as label directs.
2. Make Cocoa Party Cream this way: To 1/2 recipe Party Cream (page 185), add 2 Tablesp. cocoa.
3. Draw 9″ circle on piece of cardboard. In circle, sketch Jolly Roger insignia. Cut out insignia; lay on center top of frosted cake; then sift cocoa from tea strainer over entire top surface of cake. Carefully lift off insignia.
4. Using Cocoa Party Cream in cake decorator with plain tube, write “happy birthday, Captain Bob” around side of cake.

Buccaneer Games

PIRATE GOLD: As guests arrive, each gives the secret password, then draws a name tag bearing one of the pirate names on the Jolly Roger Place Cards (page 74). Each guest pins on his name tag and receives a bag of chocolate “gold” coins or marbles. Anyone failing to call a guest by his pirate name during the party forfeits a “gold” coin.

WALK THE PLANK: Lay a plank flat on the floor; at the end of it, place a small tub of water. As soon as each guest has assumed his pirate name, give him a trial run and let him walk the plank, then jump over the tub of water with ease.

       Now blindfold the victim; while he is being blindfolded, the water is quietly removed. It is very comical for the guests who have already gone through the ordeal to watch each one cautiously edge his way out on the plank, then jump wildly into the air, momentarily expecting to land with a splash.

PIRATE HIDEOUT: The child who is Captain Kidd for the afternoon hides while the others slowly count to 25. Then all scatter and hunt for Captain Kidd in his pirate’s den. As soon as one player finds the Captain, he doesn’t say a word but hides right along with him. And so it goes until all have found Captain Kidd. The first one to discover the Captain’s hideout becomes the next person to hide.

TREASURE HUNT: Before the party, the young host fills a treasure chest with chocolate “gold” coins and hides a silver fifty-cent piece at the bottom.

       For each pirate, the host prints, on torn pieces of brown paper, a different set of 3 clues, each giving directions on how to find the next clue; then he prints a fourth clue, which is the same for all. He puts all the first clues into a bag, hides the rest as directed, and finally hides the treasure chest itself in the “West.” Here’s a sample set of clues: 

1. Yo ho ho and a pirate ship, In the piano bench you’ll find a slip.
2. Look alive, man, or you’ll walk the plank. It’s hidden beneath the piggy bank.
3. Look under the rug; step lively will ya, You’ve been double-crossed by Long John Silver.
4. And now, young man, go West, go West, The treasure’s in the treasure chest. At the party, each pirate draws his first clue from the bag. It leads him to the next, etc., and finally to the treasure.
5. The winner must turn in all 4 clues. His prize is the fifty-cent piece. All share the “gold.”

More Craft Ideas for Pirate Parties:

• Need coloring pages of pirates or ocean life?
• Adorable (free) treasure chest candy wrappers: pattern included!
• Kids Pirate Party by Clever Kids Party
• Pirate Party Ideas from the Thematic Birthday Planner

Color a Paper Girl And Her Six Dresses

Here is another old-fashioned paper doll plus six changes of clothes! Color and cut them out on a rainy day.

Color and Cut Out These Victorian Paper Dolls

Here is a little set of Victorian paper dolls; it includes both a mother, daughter and several changes of cloths.

Make Shadows on Your Wall

       Shadowgraphy has progressed a long way from the rabbit on the wall; but in the house, ambition in this accomplishment does not often extend further than that and one or two other animals, and this is why only the rabbit, dog and swan are given here. The swan can be made more interesting by moving the arm which forms his neck as if he were prinking and pluming, an effect which is much heightened by ruffling up and smoothing down the hair with the fingers forming his beak. To get a clear shadow it is necessary to have only one light, and that fairly close to the hands.

This illustration show the positioning of the hands to make a bunny, swan and dog.