How Do Children Learn?

So my question for the day...how do children learn?  As a teacher of preschool children for the last eight years, this has been a question that I ask myself all the time.  When I started at the school I was working at, we used a curriculum that was very scripted with lots of worksheets (I know, I know...it was horrible!).  This curriculum was very vocabulary rich, I will give it that much, but as far as being age appropriate, it wasn't even close.  Kids between the ages of 3 and 5 are very active, have short attention spans and have a need to be creative and "color outside of the lines".  In the last eight years, with continuing education and the benefit of having an employee in grad school (me!), the school curriculum has been changed to a more child driven, teacher directed, play centered curriculum.  It's still high quality, we still do the same kids of things, more actually, and it works!.  Children are engaged, excited and learning!  The reason that it works...because it is age appropriate.  Pre-k kids aren't meant to sit in little desks and do worksheet after worksheet coloring all the stars yellow, because it's outlined in yellow.  They need to play, explore, touch, experiment, question, be encouraged and make a mess in order to create meaning from their environment.  Check out this article.  Great information not only for the little guys, but for every age group.

  http://www.stanford.edu/dept/bingschool/aboutbing_philosophy_learn.html


 After our Lit Circle discussion last night in class, what I took away from it is that passive listening = BORING.  Children need to be active, they need to see relevance and be able to make real connections, and build on their prior knowledge in order to really learn.