Child recognizes and develops the ability to explain how material objects change and how they remain stable.
Ways educators might support the child's development
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Include books in the learning environment that help children understand death
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And So It Goes , by Paloma Valdivia
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Goodbye Mog , by Judith Kerr
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The Goodbye Book , by Todd Parr
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Ida Always , by Caron Levis and Charles Santoso;
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The Dead Bird , by Margaret Wise Brown
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Read non-fiction books about the life cycles of familiar animals (such as cats, dogs, and other animals that children see in their communities); explore rituals and routines for having pets and for pet deaths
Child uses symbolic thought to represent.
Ways educators might support the child's development
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Ask families about cultural or religious prohibitions to representation; create a welcoming and inclusive learning environment
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Invite children to use collage materials to make dollhouses out of cardboard boxes and make characters to inhabit the dollhouses
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Sing songs with space for children’s contributions and allow them to write new verses
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Create visual art while listening to different types of music
Child develops the ability to store, retrieve, and share information about past experiences.
Ways educators might support the child's development
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Include books in the learning environment that tell stories from history
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Histories of the children’s national and cultural groups (e.g., history of Taíno people)
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Biographies (e.g., Obama, Lincoln)
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Stories of historical events (e.g., The March on Washington)
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Descriptions of life at different periods of history (e.g., prehistoric man)
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Invite elders to the classroom to talk about their memories
Child becomes a scientific thinker by manipulating objects, asking questions, making observations and predictions, and developing generalizations.
Ways educators might support the child's development
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Use photography to gather observations over time; for example, observe a tree through several seasons or watch a pumpkin over the weeks around harvest, and ask children to come up with theories about why changes occur
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Ask children to do research by looking in books for answers to their questions
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Question the child’s reasoning to explore their thought process, but without concern for correctness (“What makes you think that? How did you figure that out?”)
Child understands and explores the causes and effects of actions and events.
Ways educators might support the child's development
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Ask children why the water in a clear or open container left on the heater or windowsill diminishes over a few days
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Plant beans in a plastic bag lined with a wet paper towel; ask why some grow and some do not
Child plans and uses hands, tools, and technology to solve problems with materials.
Ways educators might support the child's development
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Include tools in the learning environment that children can access for a variety of purposes
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scissors
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staplers
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hole punches
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hammers
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measuring tapes
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hand drills
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Invite children to systematically test the stability of their block buildings by rolling balls at them
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Offer encouragement and guidance (“These problems can be solved! You can figure this out. What if you…?”)
Child recognizes some similarities and differences between familiar and unfamiliar people, objects, or experiences.
Ways educators might support the child's development
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Offer objects for comparison and categorization
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Photos of animals
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Collections of rocks or leaves
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Keys
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Buttons
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Engage children in using categorization for social good; for example, categorize recycling materials
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Provide unit blocks and rulers for measurement
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Create activities to measure distance (e.g., hold a paper airplane contest, then chart the results in a graph)
Child understands and explores numbers and quantity.
Ways educators might support the child's development
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Create a number line adding one number each day for the whole year, and use it to practice counting by ones, twos, fives, and tens
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Offer structures like a 100’s chart or number line sections for organizing number systems
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Play games in which children roll a dice or spin a spinner and move a piece along a path
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Provide strong context for solving problems with numbers (With 23 children in the class, does everyone have a snack if you have 18 snacks? How many more we need or how many extra do we have?)
Child develops the ability to identify, describe, extend, and create patterns.
Ways educators might support the child's development
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Continue to notice patterns in the world on numbered streets and avenues or windows on buildings
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Model addition with materials to ground math ideas in concrete experience; use two colors of tiles to show the commutative property of addition (two green and three red is five tiles; three green and two red is still five tiles)
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Invite children to make patterns while stringing with small beads or weaving
Child understands how objects, points, lines, and shapes fit in space.
Ways educators might support the child's development
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Look at maps with children and encourages them to describe
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Direction—which way?
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Distance—how far?
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Location—where?
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Identification—what objects?
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Coordinates—what are they?
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Encourage children to make representations out of pattern blocks (for example, a ship with a smoke stack and rhombus-shaped smoke); they may trace their pattern block images to create pattern block puzzles for one another
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Read books by Rebecca Emberly and others that show how to represent objects with different shapes
