Creativity and Play in Early Childhood

Creativity and Open-Ended Experiences

• Creativity is the ability to see things in new ways, break boundaries, think unconventionally, and make something unique and original.
• Creativity is expressed in many ways including art, music, drama, language, and mime.
• Early childhood experiences significantly affect how the brain is wired.
• The environment influences brain cells and the wiring connections between them.
• Play experiences are vital to the development of neural pathways.

Open-Ended Materials Selection Criteria

• Open-ended materials are materials that have no right or wrong way to use.
• Open-ended materials encourage individual expression and unique, novel ways of exploring materials.
• Open-ended materials encourage the provision of loose parts.

Open-Ended Play

• Children determine what to do, how to do it, and what to use.
• Open-ended play is unrestricted and allows for future change.

Curriculum

• A curriculum is a system of intentions and plans that promotes development and learning.
• Curriculum is based on an educational philosophy and theory.
• Curriculum starts with children's needs and accounts for societal priorities.
• Curriculum is defined as what to teach and how to teach it.
• Curriculum is everything a child experiences within the environment.

Constructivist Approach

• Children create and extend their mental structures, frameworks, and understanding through their own experiences.
• Children need experience with concrete objects.
• The social environment is very important for learning.
• Constructivism is a philosophy of learning based on the idea that learning occurs most effectively when the individual actively processes information in a meaningful way.

Characteristics of Play

• Play is active.
• Play is creative.
• Play is purposeful.
• Play is social and interactive.
• Play is intrinsically motivated.

Constructivism Requires Play-Based Curriculum and Learning Experiences

• Play-based curriculum and learning experiences are based on children's interests and relevant to their inquiries, abilities, responsiveness to learners, and engagement.
• Play-based learning promotes curiosity, requires children to think and figure things out, promotes reasoning and trial and error, provides time for investigations, and encourages ongoing revision of curriculum planning.

Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences

• Not all children learn in the same way. Each child is unique.
• Gardner challenged the traditional idea that intelligence is measured only by language and mathematical skills.
• There are many types of intelligences that exist in everyone.

Emergent Curriculum

• Based largely on observations and understandings of children's lives.
• Socially relevant and personally meaningful to children.
• Educators pay attention to children's cues, feelings, and ideas, communicate clearly, and encourage back-and-forth interactions.

Facilitating Physical Knowledge Learning Experiences

• Continue to sustain the opportunity and engage children's curiosity and motivation.

Interaction to Support Children's Thinking

• Intentional teaching is purposeful and thoughtful design of the social and physical environment.
• Scaffolding involves communication and actions that build on what children know and can do.
• Shared, sustained thinking and Cognitive sensitivity mean working together to solve problems, clarify concepts, and extend narratives.

Reflective Practice

• Reflective practice guides decision-making and planning by analyzing different aspects of experiences to determine what should be repeated, extended, or changed.
• Reflective practice includes seeking children's views, and considering their ideas and theories.
• Reflective practice means looking back at curriculum decisions.

Questions Educators Can Ask Themselves

• What are children saying about what they are doing and thinking?
• How motivated, curious, and interested are the children?
• How are they playing and/or interacting with each other?
• Do they show any joy and delight?
• What would they like to try out next?

Making Learning Visible Through Documentation

• Documentation is more than just a record.
• Documentation offers a process for listening to children and creating artifacts.
• Documentation provides opportunities to study with others what children reveal about their views of the world.
• Documentation allows children to display the growth and learning.

Types of Science

• Formal science is teacher-directed and uses prepared materials.
• Formal science is more abstract and must be invented (skill building).
• Informal science is often child-led.
• Informal science can be planned and developed by the practitioner.
• Incidental science occurs spontaneously.

Logical-Mathematical Knowledge

• Math is integrated into everyday life.
• The early years are important for developing mathematical knowledge.
• Learning should move beyond memorization to a deeper understanding and confidence.
• Physical knowledge is the base of mathematical knowledge.
• When children understand physical knowledge, they are able to see similarities and differences in things through the mental processing of information.
• Logical-mathematical knowledge is about forming relationships between objects in the mind.
• Logical-mathematical knowledge must be meaningful and relevant.

How Children Learn Math Concepts

• Children learn through sensory-motor experiences.
• Children move from physical characteristics to item relationships.
• Children learn through social and cultural contexts.
• Educators draw attention to numbers in the world, including cooking recipes, talking about ages, addresses, sizes, weights, distances, speeds, telephone numbers, prices, money use, telling time, reading time, and tables.

How Children Learn Math Concepts

• Children learn math and science through spontaneous experiences, child-initiated play, and informal learning.
• Educators can provide "teachable moments" to connect concepts to the curriculum.
• Structured learning emerges from above - emergent curriculum.

Math Development from Concrete to Abstract

• Children develop mathematical concepts moving from concrete to representational to abstract thinking.

CRA Method

• The CRA method provides students with a way to learn math concepts.
• The CRA method supports individual learning styles and allows children to progress at their own pace.

Mathematical Concepts

• Early learning practitioners must offer children concrete mathematical experiences and play-based activities focused on counting, shapes, one-to-one correspondence, matching, common relations, patterning, classifying, graphing, measurement, seriation, sequence (time), and estimating.

Number/Numeracy/Counting

• Children use their fingers, blocks, beads, other objects, and visual representations to count.
• Children can count to five, and begin to recognize numbers and number sequences to ten.

Measurement

• Children recognize measurement attributes (length, capacity, weight, area, temperature, time) and how they can be represented with a number.

Seriation

• Children arrange items in a graduate order including large to small.
• Children identify what comes next in a series.

Sequencing/Temporal Ordering

• Children identify the logical order of events occurring in time.
• Children are able to answer the question, "what happens next?"

Putting Actions and Events in Order of Sequence (Time)

• Fosters mathematical understanding.
• Conveys a sense of order, time, and its effects.
• Fosters an understanding of relationships between things.
• Fosters prediction skills.
• Requires memory skills.

A Holistic View of Learning

• Learning can be viewed as broader and interconnected.

The Role of the Early Learning Practitioner

• Early learning practitioners exhibit a play-based constructivist approach.
• Early learning practitioners plan for experiential opportunities rather than worksheets.
• Early learning practitioners seek a balance between child-initiated play and intentional teaching.
• Early learning practitioners use scaffolding to build on what children know and can do.

A Numbers-Rich Environment

• To create a a math-rich environment, early learning practitioners can use play tools to teach young children math.
• It is not enough to present manipulatives to children and leave them to freely explore.
• The "teachable moment" is more than presenting manipulatives.
• Play does not guarantee mathematical development, but it offers rich possibilities.