Rigorous Curriculum

There has been a lot of people getting all worked up over Obama's State of the Union Address. It took me a week or so from when I started seeing comments to actually look into "The Plan."  I was seeing a lot of negative reactions from Early Childhood professionals from all different types of programs. Their reasons for being upset were all different and I started to get VERY confused. Not to mention its impossible to find a non-biased source. 

When I finally had a chance to sit down and read the Address, I was even more confused. I didn't really see anything to get worked up about. In fact, I didn't really see more than a couple paragraphs about Obama's Universal 4 Year Old Program. I realized there was a Fact Sheet that accompanied the address. 

I don't tend to be a very political person, but this was something I needed to understand for the future.  I still can't really tell you what it said or what the implications might be. I still don't know how I feel about most of it, but I did see two words that made my stomach flip-flop.

Part of the plan for the 4 year old plan outlined included a, "RIGOROUS Curriculum." 

Gulp.

Takoma Park Nursery School in Maryland has been posting photos on Facebook, displaying perfect examples of learning through play with captions that said things like, 

"Hopefully by "rigorous 

curriculum for 4-year olds", 

they mean protecting the selkies from

 sharks using launchable magic ring

 while Siamese cats build a perch." 

Takoma Park also had a great guest post on their blog titled 

The Need to Play.

Here is some of the Rigorous Curriculum we have been working on this week.

This has been one of those weeks that leaves me feeling all warm and fuzzy inside. The kids were so engaged in activities that they have created, that it was hard to interrupt them for my own agenda. I could link every single one of these photos to at least two or three early learning standards

.

Young children work hard at play. They invent scenes and 

stories, solve problems, and negotiate their way through 

social roadblocks. They know what they want to do and 

work diligently to do it. Because their motivation comes 

from within, they learn the powerful lesson of pursuing 

their own ideas to a successful conclusion.

Crisis in the Kindergarten



Nurture.

Shhh.. The baby is sleeping.

Adventure.

Life Skills.

The dogs meet the horses.

Focus.

Explore and Create.

Another article I found:

NY Times: The State of the 4 Year-Olds

Happy Valentine's Day

Playdough: Hearts, Gems and Jewels 

Heart Necklaces

Valentine Making Station

Opening our Valentine's

Showing off our gnome heart necklaces.

Our Love Gnomes :)

Fruit and Fondue

F is for Fractions

Friendship Story

At circle time I showed the children two little figurines and named them Freddy and Fiona. I started the story and they each had a turn to add to it. When we were all finished writing the story, we started brainstorming what we would need to recreate the story. We needed things the same size as Freddy and Fiona. 

Here is our story.

Freddy and Fiona.

Freddy and Fiona are friends.

They went into a dark cave.

They walked down the path and there they saw a bear.

And a dragon. They were hiding behind the rock and the dragon was blowing fire.

They saw a froggy. The froggy hopped into the water.

They saw a horse. They hugged the horse.

A rock came and rolled down the hill

They got out of the cave because they were scared. They ran (for their lives) out of the cave. They went home.

When they got home they saw that the bear was in their house too. They opened the door.

The bear came to their house because he wanted to be their friend.

He said, "Can I play with you?"

Fiona said, "yes."

Freddy said, "yes"

The bear and the people ran around the house. They were scared of the big monster (one-eyed with a drilling nose).

They ran away to hid beneath the chair.

The bear saved Freddy and Fiona from the monster.

They were safe.

The end.

The cave full of characters and the hill.

Freddy and Fiona behind the rock, hugging the horse.

The froggy in the water.

Fire blowing dragon.

The rock rolling.

Meanwhile back at Freddy and Fiona's house...

After we were all done arranging the parts of the story, they were able to do whatever they wanted. The characters remained the same, but the story took a lot of different turns. :)