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Child Care Basics
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Trainer Monitored Discussion- Get children engaged in meaningful learning
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Trainer Monitored Discussion- Get children engaged in meaningful learning
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What are some creative ways to get children engaged in active, meaningful learning?
It’s important to observe and engage children, so you begin to understand their interests, strengths, and struggle areas. Once you have a better understanding of the child you can create activities that support their interests and help them advance certain skills. For example maybe one child struggles with social interaction, but is obsessed with ocean animals and facts. You could pair that child with another child to use an ocean book and find an animal they both are interested in, which might encourage interaction between the two children. Having a variety of materials is also important. For example if you are discussing fall, you don’t want to use only pictures, but also include physical leaves. Have the children look for leaves, investigate leaves with magnifying glasses, make a journal with writings and drawings, maybe an art craft involving leaves, pictures of fall from around the world exc..
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The classroom needs to be organized, and include learning activities, in a way that fosters child engagement. The early learning provider must be present and observe the actions of children in order to look for opportunities to ask them questions. These questions cannot induce a yes or no answer, but encourage children to think and provide more detailed and creative answers.
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Offering a new activity with new materials and motivating children to make use of those materials.For example using paint’s to color with their hands and fingers so that they use their imagination.
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Change types of games to learn like alphabet matching, number grouping, and other examples may be like sensory, arts and crafts of painting. I would also do hands on activities such as legos, magnatiles, and engage them in story telling.
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-Take a survey (or observation) of what the students enjoy and use that to help plan the activities
-Be sure to have multiple ways of entry for students of all levels and abilities (ie: some students with an IEP may need modifications)
-Offer many different choices of materials for arts and crafts or when building for STEM activities
-Child led activities that the lead teacher can act as a facilitator
-Explicitly go over the rules and model how the activity is done and roam around the room or space to observe students who need support and praise students
-Plan a variety of both indoor and outdoor activities
-Hands on materials that can be manipulated versus paper/pencil
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make the activities fun like make some paper butterflies and have them color their butterflies. Engage with the learning.
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make the activities fun, you can join them, make a lesson like a game so they can play and learn
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Enthusiastically participating in activities planned for the kids (outdoor games, crafts, pretend play) yourself can really help engage kids who otherwise might be on the periphery of the activity. Setting an example makes it easier for everyone!
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Some creative ways to engage children can be done various ways, in the past when doing circle time and reading a book. I will be very expressive and point out people, animals, or colors/shapes, or ask the children if they know what they are. Or for example a book about summer, I will ask the children if they have done any of those activities, like going to the beach, getting ice cream,etc. The children will get very excited and it will create a discussion where everyone feels included, and therefore they pay better attention to the book, or songs we are doing during circle time.
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Have activates that all children feel a part of or an activity that interests all of them for example if you live near a beach all children will most likely be excited to play with sand and build sandcastles.
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By asking questions and furthering their imaginations with simple play. Asking them what they are up to, who they are talking to, what they are making, for who, etc.
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Ask meaningful question, remain engaged in their learning and provide culturally competent games.
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making it fun for them
ask them questions
add crafts and projects
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a creative way is to provide a sensory activity that gives children the options to story tell with specific materials. From there, friends and providers can ask meaningful questions (more than yes or no) to expand topic and include others.
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In my class, I use circle time ,reading time, show and share Fridays to engage the children actively in a meaningful and fun ways. For example, during reading time, I would ask them questions especially where they can relate to themselves in their personal lives and also show and share is another fun and meaningful way of learning for all the children as each kid has their favorite collection of toys or stuffies which they would bring and have lot of fun facts to share to the classroom when they are asked the right questions.
I also use Mondays as a good day to ask the children to share their weekend time how they spent. This not only keeps them engaged and interested and they get to learn about how everyone spends their weekends.
