Illinois Early Learning Project


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Questions: Ask Dr. Katz

Archive: Question 10

Question

We at our school have been discussing which topics to select, based on what we have observed of children at play and their environment. We have also been going through the various projects posted by other teachers that have worked successfully in their classrooms. I was wondering whether you could advise me on the worthiness of these topics: my family, my friends, how an artist works, sculptors, publishing your own book, and feelings. I would greatly appreciate your guidance and advice.

Dr. Lilian G. KatzDr. Katz

As to good topics for projects with your children, I assume they are preschoolers. In which case, I would strongly recommend that the topics focus on aspects of their environment and experience that they can investigate firsthand.

The study of families would be an excellent place to start. However, I would suggest that a better title of the project would be “Our” Families rather than “My” Family. That way, part of the project would include developing summaries, such as “X number of us have brothers, Y number of us have sisters, and some of us have both.” In fact, even at the preschool stage, you could help them to make a Venn diagram to represent those facts that they will have collected. In addition, they could collect data about grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins; do some drawings of them; and find out what kinds of work they do, what games they liked to play when they were children, aspects of their homes, and so forth.

I remember some years ago visiting a classroom of 5-year-olds in Wiltshire in England, where the big sign on the blackboard was “We are a classroom full of bodies, and here are the details.” The sign was written by the teacher. But all the “facts” around the walls were collected by the children. There were graphs of their birth weights and heights, current weights and heights, numbers of siblings, colors of hair, likes and dislikes of foods, etc. But what was important was that the data were grouped to deepen the sense of belonging to a group, rather than just “My” data.

Some of the other topics you mention might be more suitable for older children than for preschoolers.

Resources

Here are some resources you might find useful:
NOTE: There may be publications on this page that are available as PDF (portable document format) files. To be able to read these files, download the free Adobe Reader.Illinois State Board of Education
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