Hi everyone – I hope you all had a very merry holiday! I just got a nice surprise – a great review from the Midwest Book Review! Most preschool teachers have musical instruments in their classrooms, but may not realize they can use them for science explorations. Science, technology, engineering, arts, and math (STEAM) these […]
Category Archives: STEAM
Of course, there are really no new ideas, only new combinations (or arrangements) of existing ideas. So learning to combine and arrange ideas in new ways is an essential part of creative thinking. When young children have learned the concept of timbre and heard many different examples, they can “create” their own timbres using familiar instruments, objects […]
December can really be a magical time of year. I love finding songs and stories that convey that magic in a way that ALL children can understand and appreciate together. “Polar Bear Night” has been a favorite of mine – and my students – since I first discovered it. Talk about a simple plot. A […]
In 1983, E. Paul Torrance wrote these remarkable words: Manifesto for Children Don’t be afraid to fall in love with something & pursue it with intensity. Know, understand, take pride in, practice, develop, exploit, & enjoy your greatest strengths. Learn to free yourself from the expectations of others and to walk away from the games […]
(Like young children, cats are enthusiastic and relentless scientists.) For years I’ve used strings (mostly ukulele strings and rubber bands) to help young children explore and understand how pitch (the highness and lowness of sounds) works. I plan to write more on this later, and I’ve shared several of these activities in my latest book, “Exploring […]
If your teaching style were a movie genre (don’t worry, this isn’t a Buzzfeed quiz), what would it be? Maybe Comedy? I once knew a trigonometry teacher who somehow combined math with an ongoing stand-up routine – every year he’d dust off his headdress and be Chief Socatowa (Something about sines and cosines? Luckily I […]
What’s on the wall next to the door of your classroom? I mean at a level where your students can see? If the answer is “nothing,” you might want to consider adding some intriguing pictures – artwork or photos of animals, space, plants, other cultures, – anything they may not have seen before that’s beautiful […]
