The Curriculum Starts Today!

A few years ago I was working with some new teaching assistants who had little classroom experience.  About 3 weeks into school we were having our weekly team meeting and I could tell they both had something to say.  Finally one of them broke the tension.  "What we want to know is.....when is the curriculum starting?"

They were surprised to find out they had already been "doing curriculum" for weeks, and actually even before the children arrived.

For young children, curriculum means more than reading, writing, and mathematics - core areas we most often associate with curriculum content.  While activities associated with the more commonly known areas can emerge days or weeks into school, certain routines and concepts need to begin right away so that children know how to use materials, routines can be established, community built, and practices experienced and repeated.

Introducing Materials

           Guided Discovery

Balance Lesson - a bit long but gives you the general idea

           Presentation and naming of materials

           How to take something out and use it

           Intentional teaching about a material

           Steps for engaging in a game or activity

          

Routines

           Coming to the rug for Whole Group

           Sitting on the rug for Whole Group – Multiple seating positions

           Leaving the rug and going to a center

           Pushing in chairs, moving chairs, getting in and out of a chair

           Treating the classroom and materials with care.

           Carrying materials

           Cleaning up and putting things away

(Clean Up Time video)

           Practicing independent work without an adult

           Free exploration of materials

Walking around the building, classroom spaces

          

Social Emotional  

           Building community

           The classroom belongs to all of us

           What do children do when they want to say something?

           How do you interrupt or ask for help?

           How to share space and materials with others

           Asking reflecting questions – "How did you know that?"

 

Early Math Content

           Collections and sorting, ordering objects, grading, classifying
           Real Graphing, Morning questions (link)
           Building, blocks (table top and on rugs)
           Connecting things and taking them apart: 

(collage, manipulatives, construction materials)
           Counting – ANYTHING!  ALL THE TIME!

Early Literacy Content

Looking at books

Listening to read-alouds at story time

Free drawing

Writing words on children's pictures

Writing children's stories as they dictate them

Offering a variety of writing materials: 

(various sized paper, little books at choice time)

Lots of fine motor opportunities:

(pegs, beads, eye droppers, tongs, etc.)

Choral reading morning messages

Helping children recognize and write their names

(copying and tracing)

Part of the development of curriculum lies in the relationship between teacher and child, and the transfer of responsibility and ownership from teacher to child. These are elements of good teaching.

I asked the children, “Whose room is this?”  There was the usual consternation as they tried to guess. Finally I said, “I’ll give you a hint. It doesn’t belong to the adults.”

“It belongs to the kids!” they said incredulously, exchanging looks of disbelief.  

This is a special moment in the beginning of each class for me. The children’s faces and tone clearly show that I am presenting them with a new experience in their lives.

“Yes, it is yours, to work in and take care of, and I will show you how to take care of it.”

(Paula Polk Lillard)  

The curriculum for a group of children moving up from one classroom to another in a child care or center-based program, or those beginning the first day of school in a public school, begins on day one. The first smile from the teacher, the first "Good Morning!" is where curriculum in early childhood starts.