Keyword: Creativity
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Creative Arts for Young Children
Creative arts are activities that actively engage children’s imagination through movement and dance, drama and storytelling, music, and visual arts. Creative arts engage children across all domains—cognitive, language, social, emotional, and physical. This toolkit will describe four different types of creative arts and will provide ideas for encouraging and supporting young children in creative arts…
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Nature Play: Loose Parts Are the Best Parts
As parents, we tend to focus on how many extracurricular activities our child is doing, thinkingthat the more they do the better their development will be. When chatting with friends, we tend to compare lists of activities as a sign of progress or accomplishment, such as “my child is doing piano lessons, tumbling, and ice…
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Creativity, Inventiveness, and Imagination
This section of the guidelines describes how infants and toddlers become more purposeful when engaging with their environment.
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Things to Do While You’re Waiting: Music and Movement
Move to the beat. Sing along. Listen. Create sounds.
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You’ve Got Blue Hands
Visual arts provide opportunities for children to use their fine motor skills to express their creativity. Children are active investigators as they explore color mixing and texture. Visual arts activities spark conversations where children can appreciate the expressions of others.
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Challenge Young Artists to Create in Three Dimensions
When young children create visual art, they explore and experiment with the properties of materials. Some classic examples of developmentally appropriate art opportunities for children include drawing with crayons, painting at an easel, or creating a paper collage. These types of art experiences allow children the opportunity to explore in two dimensions of space.
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Process Play and STEAM: Getting Started
On this podcast, we are joined by Michelle Patt, an early childhood educator, consultant, and writer. Her work emphasizes STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) learning through exploration and experimentation. She writes about the integration of art and science into preschool classroom activities to encourage children’s problem solving and innovation. Michelle is preschool supervisor at…
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Explore the Arts with Young Children
This list contains resources to help early childhood educators and caregivers plan high-quality learning experiences in the arts.
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Let’s Write a Grocery List
Caregivers can engage children in early writing experiences such as list making to support their early literacy skill development.
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Imagination and Fantasy in Early Childhood
This list contains a variety of resources associated with imagination and fantasy in early childhood.
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Tea Party
Through a progression of short clips taken over a span of 30 minutes, this video focuses on Hudson (at 30 months, the oldest in the class) gathering items, stuffed animals, and dolls; arranging them on a couch; and (briefly) enjoying his tea party with his stuffed animals.
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Talking about Waterslide Models
The children in the study group used a commercially made marble run to learn about how materials move on ramps and slides.
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Mozart Jazz Freight Train
In this video clip, 3-year-old Max is seated in a chair, moving a bow back and forth across the strings of a small cello.
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Mack Reads His Book
The teachers have encouraged Mack and his classmates to make their own books related to what they have learned during the project.
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Ideas about a Marble Run
Along with another mixed-age classroom, the preschool class has been investigating ways to turn the school playground into an outdoor learning area.
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Explaining Cradle Construction
Children in Judy Cagle’s mixed-age prekindergarten class decided to make a crib as part of a project on babies.
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An Engineer Changes His Mind
Along with another mixed-age classroom, this class has been investigating ways to turn the school playground into an outdoor learning area.
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Dustin’s French Horn Model
At the beginning of the video, Dustin (age 4) is talking with a classroom visitor he has just met. Dustin is in a prekindergarten classroom that uses the Project Approach. His class has just finished a project on musical instruments.
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Bethany Draws a Wheel
The community college child care center in this video was near the automotive lab, where auto mechanics were trained. The families of the children were students, faculty, and members of the local community. Many of the families qualified for subsidized child care because of their income. Children had many different attendance patterns, due to their…
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Out and About with Preschoolers: Visual Arts
Go ahead—take visual arts outside!
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Make Art a Part of Every Day: Focus on the Process
High-quality visual art experiences for young children should emphasize the process of creating.
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IEL Tip Sheets: Family Fun!
The IEL website hosts more than 180 Tip Sheets written for parents, teachers, and caregivers of young children. They present helpful suggestions and information on children’s social and emotional development as well as physical development and health.
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Young Children Need to Play!
Here are some things to keep in mind about play.
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Things to Do While You’re Waiting: Music, Sound, and Movement
Music, sound, and movement can ease the waiting time blues!
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Things to Do While You’re Waiting: Learning Activity Kits
Homemade learning activity kits can engage a child who hates to wait.
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Playing with Sticks: A Childhood Tradition
“It’s just a stick! You’ll find another one.” But the child knows that a good stick isn’t so easy to replace.
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What Puppets Can Mean to Children
Part of the appeal of puppets is that they can “behave” like people while not exactly being people.
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Science Play with an Award-winning Toy
Generations of children have played with cardboard boxes. Many families have stories along the lines of “We got him [name of a popular toy], but he liked the box better.”
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Make Room for Blocks!
Countless toys talk or beep or flash. But don’t forget to make time and room for blocks!
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Drama and Young Children
Here are some ways you can encourage the children in your program to engage in dramatic play.
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Toys from Throwaways: Let’s Recycle!
Make sure all materials to be used by children are clean and free from sharp fasteners or sharp edges.
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Toys from Throwaways: Boxes
Have you ever seen a child unwrap a gift, then play more with the box and wrappings than with the toy?
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Sing, Play, and Hear: Music’s in the Air
Music adds to both fun and learning in the early childhood classroom.
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Out and About with Preschoolers: Make Some Music
Preschoolers can have fun investigating dynamics, rhythm, and other elements of music while they participate in music activities outdoors.
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Things to Do While You’re Waiting: Science
So don’t just wait—investigate! You can help your child to start thinking like a young scientist by…
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Things to Do While You’re Waiting: Art Works!
Many parents find that playful learning activities can help reduce children’s impatience when they have to wait.
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The Curious Child
Do you know a child who is full of questions? The way you respond can affect what and how a child learns.
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Project Approach: Phase 3—Concluding the Project
Here are some tips to use during the last phase of a project to help enrich what the children have learned.
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What Makes a Good Toy?
Here are some questions to keep in mind when you make decisions about toys for preschool children.