Math + Engineering in Preschool with Post-it Notes! STEAM!

How do you turn STEM into STEAM in Preschool? 

MIX IN THE ARTS of COURSE! 

The year of 2015 will be remembered as a year of introspection for me: 

personally and professionally. 

We are off to a whizz-bang start on all fronts. 

Which leaves me with a lot of introspection and examination. 

Things I know for sure: 

1. There are amazing people in the Early Childhood world: 

Amazing people directing AMAZING work from very young children! 

Preschool Bulletin Board: Self-Esteem, Math and Engineering QUILTED Together!

I've just finished my first, ever, week long RESIDENCY

 for an entire school district!

My week of visiting all nine elementary buildings for a district, 

took place in Texas. 

You've always heard the rumor about life being BIG in TX? 

I'm here to report that there is validity to that claim!

Take a quick peak over my shoulder and see for yourself.  

Post-it Notes as Geometric Shapes + Fine Motor Work = Awesome ARTS Awareness

These first images are from my fifth and final day.

It was quite a week!!! 

I kicked off the week by giving a day-long

 staff development training on the Arts. 

We sang. We danced. We jumped. We laughed. We signed. We learned. 

Each teacher in attendance received a copy of my first picture book, 

"You're Wonderful." 

Quilts of Fabric become Traditional Picture Book Illustrations! "You're Wonderful" by Debbie Clement 

Quite an exuberant way to begin!

Then Tuesday through Friday I visited each of the nine buildings, 

making a total of 17 Author-Illustrator presentations 

to the youngest students in each building: 

the preschoolers! 

2. I LUV LUV LUV what I get to do for a 'living.' 

Children are so VERY capable of learning! 

That learning is designed and directed by a brilliant teacher.

Extending a picture book's style through a collaborative ARTS project builds bridges and makes connections between the disciplines!

This is what I call an Arts Integration Project! 

3. Teachers inspire each other! 

The pictures above are two different teachers in the same building, piggy-backing from each other's approach. Each are using Post-it notes as the 'fabric' for examining the possibilities of geometric shapes. 

Who is the mentor and who is being mentored. 

You might be surprised. 

Wait till you see how the third teacher in the same pod

directed her students to respond to my quilted illustrations! 

TA-DA!

I felt like I was playing "Where's Waldo."

Three teachers. Three variations. 

Shapes! Shapes! And MORE SHAPES in Preschool Art Response to "You're Wonderful" by Debbie Clement

4. My photography skills are challenged by massive Art displays. 

There's collaboration within classrooms 

and there's collaboration within a building! 

Look what happens when there are thirteen different approaches from teachers in the same building. 

The colors are vibrant and the approaches are numerous!

Why yes. 

My heart does literally JUMP when I walk into these displays!  

WHAT I KNOW FOR SURE! 

It takes vision and planning and resources and an excel spread sheet to pull off something of this magnitude! 

It takes insight and administrative support. 

It takes a willingness to step outside the box!

I am fortunate to meet passionate ECE educators at national events! 

That's how an Artist RESIDENCY unfolds! 

The next national event on my dance-card is Frogstreet's SPLASH this summer. 

I am so excited. I'm so VERY excited at the opportunity to return! 

1200 Children Dance to Pharrel Williams' "HAPPY" in Cincinnati!

Hello!

I had the opportunity to help with an exciting project, Cincy Dances in Washington Park!, that brought over 1200 third-graders in the Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky area together to dance and celebrate the arts on May 21.  It all happened in beautiful Washington Park in the heart of our city.

The project was conceived and carried out by Julie Sunderland, the Director of Education and Outreach for the Cincinnati Ballet.  With the help of grants and sponsors, the staff of the Cincinnati Ballet and many volunteers, she was able to send dance instructors to teach the dance to the children and faculty members of schools who were invited and wanted to participate.  The day of the event, transportation, lunches, and t-shirts were provided to all the participants.

It was an exciting way to bring children together, expose them to dance and other arts (Cincinnati Symphony, Children's Theater, and Cincinnati Opera all gave short interactive presentations), and give the children a chance to play and dance together.

Below are photos, links to the dance, and the poster which names the sponsors and shows how the event was pulled together.

Keep on dancin',


Connie Bergstein Dow

www.movingislearning.com

MOVING IS LEARNING!

Watch a short edited version:
Cincy Dances in Washington Park!

Watch the whole dance:

Cincy Dances in Washington Park (unedited)

WHAT:  Cincy Dances  in Washington Park! WHEN:  May 21, 2014 12 - 1 pm WHERE: Washington Park, Over-the-Rhine Come dance with us on your lunch break!  On Wednesday, May 21, Cincinnati Ballet has invited over 1,200 local third graders to dance together in Washington Park. Cincy Dances is a fun-filled, enriching event with a focus on community connection and arts education. For more information or to volunteer, contact Julie Sunderland at jsunderland@cballet.org. To learn the dance, visit https://www.cballet.org/WashingtonParkDance Special Thanks to: PRESENTING SPONSORS:    ADDITIONAL SUPPORT:   Clever Crazes for Kids            2013-2014 50th Anniversary Season Sponsors

MAPS and Scientific Creativity

Happy Summer everyone!  Great to have the chance to connect with all of you again.  For those new to my blog, I'm Enrique Feldman and I'm the Founder and Director of Education for the Fostering Arts-Mind Education Foundation.  We work closely with MyTown in LA and together we guide thousands of parents, teachers, and children in various states and abroad.

Maps have been around for a very long time.  The earliest known maps are of the heavens, not the earth.  Maps dating to 16,500 BC found on the walls of the Lascaux caves, map out part of the night sky, including three bright starts, Vega, Deneb, and Altair, as well as the Pleiades star cluster.  What?  Is this an early childhood blog?  Yes… yes, it is.  While the first map was of the heavens, many of the maps I have seen children make are of places they know.  Quite often, maps of where there house in relationship to other places they know, like school.  At the Benson Head Start Center, they used a great prompt as you see below, along with the answers given by 4 - 5 yr olds.

Any number of questions could be asked to engage the mind of a young child related to maps and why they are used.  What I love about this particular question is how open ended it was.  They didn't ask a question like "Do you use Maps to find your way home?"  They simply asked, "Why do people use maps?"  They could also "What is a map?"  This allows the learner a great deal of freedom of thought, which is related to creativity.  Below is one sample map of a young child. 

• What do you see?
• Is there a key being used? (wow… I think there is!)
• Based on this map, what knowledge is the child exhibiting?
• What would another potential question be in order to extend their knowledge and use of maps?

Above I mentioned creativity.  In this case, I want to highlight the engagement of scientific creativity.  What does that mean?  The simplest way of describing this is the use of creativity with critical thinking simultaneously.  According to Dr. J. H. Mathewson of the Department of Chemistry at San Diego State University, "Thinking with images plays a critical role in scientific creativity and communication but is neglected in science classroom."  This comes from an article in SCIENCE EDUCATION titled "Visual-Spatial Thinking: an aspect of science overlooked by educators."  Essentially, this article highlighted the effectiveness of "imagery" and building knowledge and skill in "visual-spatial cognition."  

• Imagery: the formation, inspection and maintenance of images in the mind's eye without any literal visual stimulus.

• Visual-Spatial Cognition: the use of the eyes to identify, locate, and think about objects and ourselves in the world.

What may seem like a cute and simple strategy of creating maps, is in fact a scientifically proven approach to engage students of any age in ways which elevate their ability to be scientifically creative!  Here is another map by a young child.  Ask yourself:

• How is this map different from the previous one?
• What questions could you ask of young children to compare and contrast these two maps?
• What kind of knowledge and understanding does the maker of the map below have?

Maps create a bird's-eye view which can create new perspectives which in turn can lead to new ideas, says Dr. David Meiers, Director of the Center for Accelerated Learning in Wisconsin,and Dr. Owen Caskey, of Texas Tech University.  Together they led a year long federally funded study using full-bodied imagery with college students.  The results were impressive:

• Immediate recall of information: increased by 12%
• Long term recall of information: increased by 26%

With young children, think about how you could use the Art form of Embodiment to "become maps with their bodies."  Children play like this already.  With a sense of guidance and authentic dialogue, I have engaged young children in becoming parts of a map as a group.  It's a very different perspective than drawing a map.  Both the drawing of maps and the embodiment of maps compliment higher level thinking.

Related to the map below, ask yourself:

• What kind of factual information is this child showing knowledge of with his/her map?
• What kind of emotional information is this child showing knowledge of with his/her map?
• What kind of questions would you use with this child to extend the learning?

A map lights up the mind because it is essentially a picture.  Anything we can visualize will stay with us for longer period of time, at any age.  With that in mind, I ask you the to consider the following questions.  I'm not going to answer these questions, because if I did, I'd be robbing you of the process of taking your own mental journey.

• Could a child create a map of numbers or incorporate numbers in some way?
• Could a child create a map of letter/words or incorporate letter/words in some way?
• Could a child create a map of cycles in nature?
• What would happen if we, as teachers, used more questions than exclamation points?
• What would happen if we, as teachers, used more questions than periods?

What I have been sharing with you comes from the Context Method®, which powers both MyTown and the Fostering Arts-Mind Education Foundation.  I think maps are a great study and/or project for young children.  I tip my hat to the teachers and children at Benson Head Start Center and I encourage you, the reader, to use map making in your work with young children.

Con un abrazo fuerte (With a big hug!),

Enrique

THE MAKING OF A CASTLE TOWER - Children and Culture

Hello!

It's Enrique here and I'm so glad you're back for another glimpse at ways to engage young learners at any age.  This content and beauty of this blog comes in large part from the Sunnyside Head Start Center, which is part of Child-Parent Centers in Southern Arizona.  It also comes to us from the childhood memories of one of their leaders, Center Director Thelma Valdez.  Enjoy this description of what a "Castle Tower" is in the Mexican culture.

Castle Towers are part of the collective memory of many who have grown up in the U.S. Southwest and Mexico.

Castle Towers can be made in miniature and is a great ongoing project for kids of any age, including  3 - 5 year olds.  In my hometown of Tucson, Arizona, Castle Towers make sense as they connect us to a part of our Latin culture.  For other parts of the world, you could choose to make Castle Towers to "visit" our part of the world… or you could choose something from you culture to replicate in miniature.  For Castle Towers, you're going to need a lot of very colorful items.

• Colored Ribbons
• Colored String

• Plain Toothpicks
• Colored Toothpicks

• Small wood pieces of different shapes
• Colored material cut into small shapes, including flags

• Scissors
• A square or rectangular piece of wood as the base

• Glue
• Creativity
• Critical Thinking

• Patience to build small parts first

and the practiced vision to see how the small parts fit into a larger system

A giving adult to act as a guide and who is willing to ask questions like, "what else could we use?" and "how can we solve that problem?"

There are so many variations and you sometimes end up creating more than you envisioned, which is something we can hopefully continue to experience as adults.

The physical things you need to build a Castle Tower are obviously important, but there is something more important… the willingness to risk and explore… there is no one way.

Young learners will develop fine motor skills that are pre-writing in nature and it's also quite possible to learn about colors, shapes, proportion, and much more with young learners.  With older learners you could easily focus on things such as symmetry, asymmetry, fulcrum and counterbalance...

but there is something more important that can and should be learned through this experience…

Starting with a plan and expecting the plan to change.

Starting with a plan and looking forward to change.

Setting mini-goals to reach larger ones.

Being open to new goals appearing.

Finishing what you start.

Seeing more to create… even when you're "done."

What more can you do with the young learners in your life?

Endeavor

Enrich

Evolve

Enrique C. Feldman, Founder/Director of Education

Fostering Arts-Mind Education Foundation

Co-Founder/Director of Education

Context Method®