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Help! Lend Me an Idea!
The school year is almost over but for many educators there is no summer break. I find that I get a little antsy at this time of year when some of my educator friends are planning a work-free summer and I am faced with planning another season of activities. Sometimes I need a little inspiration for fun things to do with kids.
One activity we’ve been doing at Boston Children’s Museum this month in the Art Studio is “Map Making”. Children can make a map of anything they’re familiar with: the playground, their school, their bedroom ….the possibilities are endless! Maps can be drawn with pencils, crayons, and markers or collaged with bits from magazines or made with toothpicks glued to paper (reminiscent of Polynesian stick charts).
Here are some books to go with a mapping activity:
• My Map Book, by Sara Fanelli
• Follow That Map, by Scot Ritchie
• Me On The Map, by Joan Sweeney and Annette Cable
If you get creative blocks like I do, these blogs help me recharge and find inspiration. Hope they help you too!
http://progressiveearlychildhoodeducation.blogspot.com/
http://teachertomsblog.blogspot.com/
http://www.sunhatsandwellieboots.com/
http://www.childcentralstation.com/
http://www.classic-play.com/issues/
Do you have favorite resources that get you out of your creative ruts? Let us know what they are!
National Birth Trends Catch Up with Boston: Babies of Color are the Majority
Today’s Washington Post reports that minority babies for the first time outnumber white infants nationally. Nationally, 50.4% of children under 1 are Hispanic, black, Asian American or in other minority groups.
Boston’s young children have reflected this trend for quite some time. Data from the 2010 Census shows that 71.5% of Boston’s 34,741 children birth to five are not white. 29.3% are Hispanic, 29% are African American/Black, 5.7% are Asian and 7.5% are multiracial/other – compared with 28.5% who are white.
This is in sharp contrast to data on the whole population. Even though Boston is a majority-minority city, 47% of the population is white, 22.4% is black/African American, 17.5% is Hispanic, 8.9% is Asian and 12.3% are multiracial/other.
For more on Boston’s demographics, check out the Boston Redevelopment Authority’s Census reports.
“Pressure-cooker Kindergarten” – Where are we now?
In 2009, The Boston Globe took a look at a trend of increasing academic demands on our youngest students, their teachers, and families. Even in kindergarten, children and their educators are being subjected to tests and standards “that early childhood researchers agree are developmentally inappropriate, even potentially damaging.” These new expectations arose out of concern for the achievement gap between white students and minorities; mandatory standardized testing was meant to hold schools accountable for all their students. According to Globe, accountability has come at the cost of play time and other activities critical to early brain development. Their special report featured the experiences of educators and experts struggling with the balance between accountability and best practices – many of whom work in the Boston area.
Three years later, what are the academic pressures of the kindergarten classroom? Do the experiences of the teachers in this piece reflect your own? How do you balance accountability with play? What’s changed? What’s stayed the same? Where do you think we should go from here?
Continue Reading April 23, 2012 at 1:22 PM Countdown Leave a comment
Ladybug Girl and the Bug Squad: Jumpstart’s official 2012 Read for the Record Book!!
“The Bug Squad is a team again!”
Jumpstart and the Pearson Foundation are thrilled to announce that the official Jumpstart Read for the Record campaign book for 2012 is Ladybug Girl and the Bug Squad by David Soman and Jacky Davis!
In Ladybug Girl and the Bug Squad, join Ladybug Girl, Lulu, on another adventure with her Bug Squad friends! Together they will share their superpowers, fight off tall giants and aliens, and learn the importance of saying sorry. This book offers great opportunities for parents and teachers to talk about friendship, encourage make-believe play, and help children realize when it is important to apologize, even if it isn’t easy or things don’t go their way.
And, for the first time this year, Jumpstart’s Read for the Record will take place over a full week from September 27 to October 4, giving record breakers across the country even more opportunity to support Jumpstart’s mission to work toward the day every child in American enters school prepared to succeed. Again this year, record breakers will also be able to take part by reading the book for free at We Give Books (www.wegivebooks.org), the free digital reading initiative created by Penguin and the Pearson Foundation.
Stay tuned over the summer and into the fall for more Jumpstart updates, activities and initiatives for Read for the Record 2012. In the meantime, stop by your favorite library, bookstore, or visit We Give Books and take a look at Ladybug Girl and the Bug Squad!
Celebrating the Vietnamese New Year in Fields Corner
Fields Corner Children Thrive celebrated the start of the Year of the Dragon on Saturday, January 21st.
Over 60 Vietnamese families with young children with Autism joined Mayor Thomas M. Menino at Dorchester House Multi-Service Center for games, arts and crafts, a traditional Dragon Dance, and the chance to receive “lixi”, a small gift of money meant to bring good luck in the new year.
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Fields Corner Children Thrive sponsors a monthly support group for Vietnamese families with children with Autism. For more information, contact Marika Michelangelo at Dorchester House.
Photos courtesy of Oriole Bui.
COMING SOON: STEM Resources for Preschool Teachers
How often have you heard preschool teachers talking about their STEM activities or the STEM skills in their curriculum? Probably not very often but preschool teachers are engaging children in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math activities every day. They don’t refer to their activities as STEM activities but they are. A common misconception is that STEM activities are for older kids. What does STEM look like for preschoolers? The STEM Sprouts Teaching Guide will show you! Through a project funded by National Grid, Boston Children’s Museum has created the STEM Sprouts Teaching Guide, soon to be available on the Museum’s website http://www.bostonchildrensmuseum.org/.
This is what you’ll find in the guide:
- What is STEM is all about?
- Brain Building 101
- Asking Good Questions: Focus on “What”
- A Day in the Life of a Preschooler
- Massachusetts Guidelines for Preschool Learning Experiences
- STEM Activities for Preschoolers
In addition there will be eight downloadable tip sheets on Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, Seeing, Touching, Hearing, and Smelling/Tasting each with the following information:
• How can so much fun teach STEM skills?
• Activities to try
• What to tell children
• What to tell parents
• The brain-building connection
• Books to learn more
For more information about the guide, contact Beth Fredericks: fredericks@bostonchildrensmuseum.org
Economic Success Starts Early
A new report from the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, the State of Working Massachusetts 2011, shows that our state’s economy is strong, despite recent years of recession, with lower unemployment rates, higher median wages, and lower poverty rates than the national average.
What’s the biggest factor in our state’s success relative to the nation? A well-educated workforce.
- Massachusetts has the largest percentage of workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher of any state in the country, at 43.9% (slide 4 in the link above).
- Higher education leads to better jobs with higher salaries. Wages for workers with higher education levels, particularly a bachelor’s degree or higher, have grown faster than wages of workers with lower educational attainment (slide 5).
- Education also offers some protection against unemployment, even in a poor overall economy. In 2010, Massachusetts workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher had significantly lower rates of unemployment than those with less education (slide 6).
It’s good news – but there’s a catch: the gap between high and low wage workers is growing.
Over the last 30 years, the gap in hourly wages for low and high income workers has increased by nearly $10. At the same time, low income household income hasn’t risen very much, and the real value (taking into account inflation) of the minimum wage has decreased.
What does this mean for kids?
Not surprisingly, even though Massachusetts ranks 9th in the country for states with the lowest poverty rates, poverty among children is rising. In 2010, 14.3% of all children in the state (roughly 200,000 children) lived below the poverty line – up from 13.1% in 2009.
What should we do?
The data shows that higher education equals higher income. We need to start early, giving all kids, particularly those facing economic and other challenges, access to high quality early education and other support services right from the start. High quality early education and care in the early years is crucial to ensuring that kids reach their full potential in the future, providing support over the first few years of life when the brain is forming a strong foundation for all future learning and skill development.
What can you do?
Volunteer – There are countless opportunities to make a difference in the lives of young kids in your community. Check out Jumpstart and Horizons for Homeless Children or your local YMCA.
Advocate – Young children need you to speak out on their behalf. Check out Early Education for All/Strategies for Children and reach out to your local government officials to let them know early education is important to you
Be a Teacher – Young children learn everywhere. Check out Talk Read Play to learn about activities you can do at home and in the community to support children’s learning.
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