Category Archives: Early Learning

Process over Product

You may hear early childhood educators say “Focus on Process more than Product.” Let’s explore what they mean by process and product, and some concrete tips on how to stay focused on the process.

In product-focused activities, the teacher or adult has a finished product in mind and has created a sample for children to copy, children have instructions to follow and all the children’s finished products look similar to each other. The closer the result to the displayed sample, the more we tend to praise the child for doing it well. There is definitely a place for product-focused activities, and learning how to follow directions to create something specific. This can be an excellent way to learn certain skills. But, if our child only follows directions, it can limit their creativity and limit their learning. It can also create stress if they feel like they always have to work to do things ‘the right way.’ (Check out the pictures at the top of the page. They all show paintings made using a flower as a paint brush. The lovely picture on the left is from here. The others are from 3 year olds in my class. All we did was set out paper, paint, and flowers, and the kids in our class had a fabulous time exploring this art experience. But imagine if we had set the painting of the flowers in a vase on the table at the start of class. How would that have affected the kid’s process and product?)

So, we want a balance of product and process in our child’s lives. For example, if your child gets a Lego set and follows the directions precisely to create the model as designed, they learn about paying close attention to directions, doing things in the right order, and not leaving out any steps. They are satisfied with their result. But then, you can encourage them to take that Lego set apart when they’re ready, and mix it with their other Legos, and play as long as they want, and build anything they want to build. That’s the process-focused side of Legos.

In process-focused activities, the focus is on experience, and exploration of tools and techniques. It is completely child-guided, with no right or wrong way of exploring. Children decide whether or not to do the activity, and how much time to spend on it. Examples in our classroom include: the water table, sensory table, block building, easel painting, “creation station” collages, and collaborative group art projects. We also do lots of explorations of scientific ideas and engineering projects which we think of as “tinkering.” These process-based activities do not lead to beautiful masterpieces to hang on the refrigerator or mail to grandparents. But they do lead to lots of fun and lots of learning.

Ways that you can support the Process:

When planning an activity, instead of asking “what will the children make”, ask “what will the children do?” and “what materials can I put out that invite creativity and learning?” If your child asks “what am I supposed to do?” you can say “I see lots of cool supplies and tools on this table. Want to try them out? What would you like to do with them?”
Approach the project like open-ended play. Let it be a joyful experience.
Provide plenty of uninterrupted time for kids to explore. Let them decide how long to spend on an activity. Some days you’ll put out an “invitation to play” and it will captivate them for hours. Other days, they’ll have other ideas of their own to pursue and barely skim past something that you planned.
Let go of your own judgments. Process-focused art and building projects can seem messy and pointless. Don’t think of them as a waste of materials, think of the brain cells your child is building through this experience and the skills they’ll learn now and apply to later efforts!
If you’re sitting with a child who is doing art or building something, try to copy what they are doing. Otherwise, they will try to copy you, and think that the way you’re doing it is the “right” way. They may be disappointed when their item is not as good as yours.
Or, if you’re playing side by side with them, make some mistakes: paint with your non-dominant hand, or build a tower too tall so it falls over. Let them see you explore.
Don’t ask them “what is it” – ask “tell me about what you’ve done.”
Don’t distract them with irrelevant questions. If they’re completely engaged in a process, don’t interrupt it with a name-this-color quiz.
Don’t decide for them that they are done. Often adults watch for when there’s a “nice” painting, and then offer to take the paper away before the child “messes it up.” Or they watch a child building and realize that it’s all about to come tumbling down, so they encourage the child to stop and not add that toppling brick on the top.
Ask them if they want to write their name on their art. If they say yes, then ask “would you like me to write it or do you want to?” If they want you to write it, ask where to write it. Ask them where they want to put it. On the refrigerator or in the recycling bin? Try to not be disappointed in their choices of what to keep and what to let go of.

As your child gets older, more and more of their time will be dedicated to products – book reports, math tests, science fair presentations, scoring goals at soccer, and more. Lots of time “doing things the right way.”

The early years should focus much more on process. All of a baby’s play time is process and free exploration. A toddler’s life should be about 90% process, 10% focused on specific accomplishments – learning to undress themselves, learning to eat with a fork, holding a pencil and making a scribble, stacking a few blocks to make a tower. In the preschool years, we may aim for 80% process, 20% product. Never think of the process as a less valuable learning experience. It’s building creativity, inspiring curiosity, helping them make unexpected connections, and getting them excited about what they can do ‘all by themselves.’

Thanks to these articles for inspiration:

http://www.ooeygooey.com/handouts/art.pdf

http://www.naeyc.org/tyc/article/process-art-experiences

http://prekandksharing.blogspot.com/2012/02/making-transition-from-product-to.html

http://www.prekandksharing.blogspot.com/2012/02/childrens-art-process-versus-product.html

What children learn in a multi-age classroom

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A while back, I wrote about mixed-age play and the benefits of multi-age classrooms. Today, I’ll describe what the learning experience is like for different ages of children at my Family Inventors’ class. We enroll children ages 3 – 7. When I say that to many preschool teachers, they are startled, saying “that’s a really wide range of developmental abilities! How does that work out?” We think it works great!

Why do we teach mixed age?

We want to be able to welcome a whole family in to participate. We are a parent co-op, which means that parents work in the classroom once a month, and they typically “stay and play” with their child on the days they’re not working. We want it to be possible for parents to be able to attend the class with all of their children. About a third of our families have two children in the class. We’ve had a couple families where three kids fit in our age range!

But it’s also because we believe in the benefits of multi-age classrooms: the younger kids tend to learn faster and learn more when they can observe the older children’s learning process. The older kids learn empathy and responsibility by interacting with the younger ones, but they also learn the academic concepts better through the process of explaining their ideas to the younger kids.

Can the little ones follow all the ideas you cover?

We are a STEM-based program. Some of our themes this year are: Chemistry – Solutions; Biology – Habitats; Building Towers, Tunnels and Bridges; and a multi-week unit on Simple Machines. We talk about these ideas in circle time and read books about them, but we also have lots of hands-on exercises to help children explore and discover some of the foundations of science. We expect that our 5 – 7 year olds will understand everything we teach. And they do. They’re able to understand the ideas, apply them to the class exercises, and extrapolate from them to a deeper understanding. They remember the concepts we talked about in circle.

Our pre-K age kids (age 4 – 5) get some of the ideas. They definitely understand the hands-on exercises and experience “gravity” and can describe to you what it is that they’ve learned about how gravity affects something. They don’t necessarily make any leaps beyond what we cover in class, and they may or may not remember the concept behind the exercises a few months later. (But, if you ask them to repeat an activity they learned in class… like asking “If I roll a toy car down this steep ramp and another one down this not-so-steep ramp, which will go faster”, they will remember that hands-on learning.) They definitely grasp more concepts by watching the older kids’ “a-ha moments” than they would grasp if the class was just adults telling them stuff.

Our littlest ones, the young 3’s, may not get the scientific concepts at all. And we don’t expect them to. What they get is a great preschool class with water play, sensory play, play-dough, building with blocks, stories, songs, and outdoor time – things that build small motor-skills, large motor skills, musical skills, language, and social development. They get exposed to lots of opportunities to play with how the world works. They rub balloons on their hair to make their hair stand up. We play with things that float on water and things that sink. We play with balls that roll down tracks. Some day, later in life, when someone talks to them about static electricity or buoyancy, or when they want to build their own marble maze, they’ll have this foundational knowledge in their brain, ready to be built upon.

What about the social dynamics?

In general, our olders play very well with our youngers. They naturally mentor them and help them out with simple tasks, like writing their names or tearing off a piece of tape. The children who are older siblings do especially well at this. But, for those who don’t have a younger sibling at home, it’s a great chance to practice interacting with someone who is younger and less knowledgeable than they are.

Our younger kids love having the big kids to follow around. They learn from them, play with them, imitate them. They may turn to an older child for help with things instead of always turning to adults for help, and learn more in the process.

For us as the teachers having this wide age range is definitely a challenge for curriculum planning. For each activity, we think about how each age of child can learn from it. For example, a simple activity might be setting out plastic bugs and containers on a table. The littlest children just play with the bugs and move them around and in and out of containers however they want (practicing small motor skills). The middle-ages may be encouraged to count them OR to taught the difference between beetles and spiders and flying bugs and asked to sort them. The oldest kids are asked to figure out what the three types of bugs are, then sort them into categories and then count how many of each category there are.

If we’re building pompom launchers with plastic spoons, rubber bands and craft sticks, we show the young ones how to build one (and help them as needed) then encourage them to play with them. For the older children, we let them figure out how to build one by looking at the prototype. We have them test it, then set a goal for themselves – do they want it to launch multiple pompoms? Or launch further? Or with more accuracy? We encourage them to tinker and adapt their designs using other available materials to achieve their goals.

We can’t assume that any of our students know how to read, but many of them do. And parents are always around to read for them if needed. So, we do put out signs at each activity that explain how it connects to the concepts of the day. And some weeks, like our “What is a Scientist” week, we put out worksheets that encourage children to do an experiment and record their results (like how many times a flipped coin lands heads-up or how many drops of water can they put on a penny). We’re hopeful that our oldest kids get some math and writing practice at those stations, but we figure our youngest kids get to learn how to flip a coin and notice that it has two different sides, and get to learn the fine motor skill of using an eye dropper and the hand-eye coordination of trying to get the drops to land on a penny. There is learning at every level.

When providing all this individualized learning, it helps a lot that we have a lot of adults in the room. In addition to our teachers, as a co-op, we also have some parents working in the classroom each week, and because we’re a Saturday class, the majority of parents actually stay-and-play each week. So, there’s always a grown-up around to help, but we also encourage the parents to sit back and let their children explore independently and support each other’s learning whenever possible.

The most exciting part is when kids come back year after year – we’ve had children join us for three or four years in a row. We see them go from the three year old who is splashing in the water table and finger painting to the 6 year old who is exploring our challenge projects, and stretching their learning to new levels of understanding. Although they may be doing the same activity they did the previous year, their level of skill mastery and understanding has stepped up a huge notch.

When should kids learn to read?

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The Alliance for Childhood and Defending the Early Years just released a report called Reading Instruction in Kindergarten – Little to Gain, Much to Lose, discussed in a Washington Post article titled “Requiring kindergartners to read — as Common Core does — may harm some.” This post looks at what we know about children and early literacy learning.

When I was a child in the 60’s, I came into kindergarten knowing how to read – I could easily read any picture book. I was the only real reader in the class – but I came from a big family of early readers. By the end of the year, my classmates were all expected to have their alphabets down, and more kids were reading. By the end of first grade, most kids were reading. Those who weren’t got a little extra help in second grade and were caught up by the end of the year. That may reflect the normal range in developmental capabilities.

But today’s kindergartners are being taught to Common Core standards. In kindergarten, there are over 90 standards kids are expected to meet, including:

Recognize and name all upper- and lowercase letters of the alphabet.
Associate the long and short sounds with common spellings (graphemes) for the five major vowels.
Use the most frequently occurring inflections and affixes (e.g., -ed, -s, re-, un-, pre-, -ful, -less) as a clue to the meaning of an unknown word.
[And, by the end of the year:] Read emergent-reader texts with purpose and understanding.

Is this do-able for some kids? Absolutely. My kids all read before kindergarten. My youngest just turned 4 and has already mastered the standards I just listed. (And believe me, it’s not because we drilled him with flashcards or worked with worksheets for hours… we’re much too lazy as parents to do that! We just did simple things to create a good environment for literacy learning, and he took it from there.)

But NOT ALL KIDS are ready to read at this young age!

Kids develop in predictable patterns, but not at exactly the same rate. And they’re stronger in some areas at any given time than in others. For example, although my kids were early readers, they also each had areas they were “behind on” for their age, which were the challenges they needed to work on in kindergarten.

Dr. Arnold Gesell found that all children go on the same path of development; however, some go faster, some go slower, and all have spurts and set-backs
along the way. The obvious example is the age that children learn to walk. Some children learn to walk as early as nine months, some as late as 15 months. But that is all normal and we all agree that the early walker is not a better walker than the later walker. … Some children learn to read at age three or four years, others not until seven years or later. That range is quite normal. The most compelling part of the reading research is that by the end of third grade, early readers have no advantage over later readers. Some later readers even go on to become the top in their class. Reading early is not an indicator of higher intelligence. In fact, children at the top of their class in kindergarten only have a 40 percent chance of being at the top of their class at the end of third grade.

When we focus on academically based standards, it’s hard for kids who aren’t developmentally ready for that, but it’s also hard for kids like mine who needed skills that weren’t necessarily on the list of things a teacher is now “supposed” to teach. “In a survey… of early childhood teachers… 85% of the public school teachers reported that they are required to teach activities that are not developmentally appropriate for their students.”

And when teachers are asked to teach non-developmentally appropriate content, they have to do it in non-developmentally appropriate ways.

We hear increasing reports of kindergartens that use worksheets and drills, rely on lengthy whole-group lessons, and require teachers to frequently pull children out of the classroom to administer assessments. A parent recently wrote: “My 5-year-old son started Common Core Kindergarten this year in California. Even though it’s only been two months he is already far behind. … [W]e are required to do … [worksheets] four nights a week. It’s the same boring thing over and over again… I know he’s not stupid but I’m being told in not so clear terms that he is. It’s very disheartening.”

Drills and worksheets are not the way kids learn.

Well, in the short-term, they can be. Direct instruction CAN help children memorize specific facts and learn specific skills, but it doesn’t foster the curiosity and creativity that can be beneficial for learning in the long run. (Learn more in this article on “Why Preschool Shouldn’t Be Like School.”) And, the “boring” work can drain the passion for learning from our kids, which I believe is key for long-term academic success. And, for kids who aren’t developmentally ready for the work, it can make them feel stupid. I know of boys who weren’t ready to read at age 6 and 7. They learned at that age that they were “stupid” in school subjects and continue as young adults to think of themselves that way.

The report states: “We could find no research cited by the developers of the CCSS [Common Core] to support this reading standard for kindergarten… of the people on the committees that wrote and reviewed the CCSS, not one of those individuals was a
K-3rd grade teacher or an early childhood professional.”

What does the research show?

There is no solid evidence showing long-term gains for children who are taught to read in kindergarten. In fact, by fourth grade and beyond, these children read at the same level as those who were taught to read in the first grade.

So, what is developmentally appropriate for preschool and kindergarten? Play-based learning.

Children learn best when they are engaged in activities geared to their developmental levels, prior experiences and current needs. As they construct their ideas through
play and hands-on activities that make sense to them, children’s knowledge builds in a gradual progression that is solid and unshakable. They build a foundation of meaning that provides the basis for understanding concepts in language, literacy, math, science and the arts. In active learning, their capacities for language development, social and emotional awareness, problem solving, self-regulation, creativity, and original thinking develop, transforming them into effective learners.

Being able to read well will also depend on the strength of a child’s oral language development. Active, play-based experiences in the early years foster strong oral language in children. As children engage in active learning experiences and play, they are talking and listening all the time. They attach words to their actions, talk with
peers and teachers, learn new vocabulary and use more complex grammar. As they build, make paintings, and engage in imaginative play, they deepen their understanding of word meanings. As they listen to and create stories, hear rich language texts, sing songs, poems and chants, their foundation for reading grows strong.

What’s the evidence that play-based preschool and kindergarten works in the long-run?

In one study, in the third grade there was little difference between students who had been in play-based preschools versus academic achievement programs. By 6th grade, the kids from the academic preschools earned lower grades than those who were in play-based preschools. A German study in the 70’s compared kids from play-based vs. academic preschools. In fourth grade, those from play-based programs excelled “on all 17 measures, including being more advanced in reading and mathematics and being better adjusted socially and emotionally in school.” So, they’re not only successful academically, but also socially. In an American study from the 60’s, children from impoverished households were assigned to either play-based preschools or to a scripted, direct-instruction approach. There were similar short-term gains for all children in the first year. But at age 23, there were significant differences. 47% of the kids from the direct instruction classroom needed special education for social difficulties versus 6% of the play-based alumni.

When looking for preschool or kindergarten for your child, you can look for play-based options. If they are in a kindergarten that follows Common Core standards, you can look for ways to balance that out at home with lots of child-directed free play. You can create a literacy-rich home environment without pushing reading. If your child is ready to read young, they will do so. If they’re not ready, they won’t feel stressed or stupid.

If you are the parent of a toddler, don’t feel any pressure to teach your child to read. But, you can create an environment full of literacy materials that show reading is exciting and fun.Read my ideas on this or follow this lead:

[In play-based settings] Teachers employ many strategies to expose children to rich oral language and print —without bombarding or overwhelming the child. These may include telling stories, reading picture books and big books, singing songs and reciting poems, reading from posted charts (using pointers to read along), drawing and writing with invented and conventional spellings, taking dictation from children, and helping children write their own stories. In organic and meaningful ways, teachers often use print — labeling block structures, cubbies, and interest areas, writing recipes, transcribing the children’s stories, and making charts for attendance or classroom jobs.

photo credit: ThomasLife via photopin cc

Preschool Choice Time

Boy and Girl Toys

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Toy Selection

Every egalitarian parent has a story like “I bought my son some sweet little teddy bears – he had them roar and crash into each other. I bought my daughter trains, and she had the mama train take care of the baby train.” It is true that one of the biggest differences between boys and girls are in the toys they choose to play with, and how they play with them. “It’s bigger than [differences in] verbal skills, math, aggression and risk taking. [But] I think it is misleading because parents see the difference in toy selection and draw a line to everything else.” (Eliot)

The difference in interests may have some biological influence, but is also very much a product of culture. At 6 – 12 months, boys and girls are interested in the same toys. For example, both like dolls a lot, because all babies are enamored of the human face. Boys have a very slight preference for wheeled vehicles, but otherwise they’re mostly the same.

But by age 3, there are major differences in preferred toys, and even more so at 5, especially for boys. In an experiment, five year old boys would spend less than 10% of their play time with “girl” toys. Girls would split their time much more evenly between boy toys and girl toys.

Let’s look at how this developmental shift lines up with children’s growing understanding of their cultural gender.

When do children learn about gender? (Source)

7 months. Start to tell the difference between male and female voices
12 months. Start to tell the difference between male and female faces
2 years. Girls begin to play with ‘girl toys’ and boys with ‘boy toys.’
2- 3 years. Begin to label themselves and others as male or female
3 – 4 years. Start actively categorizing things as boy things and girl things and talking about “boys like to do this” or “girls like to do that”
4 – 6 years. Say “only boys can do this” or “only girls do that”
6 – 7 years. Children understand that gender is constant: boys grow up to be men*; girls won’t ever be daddies; and that person up on the stage is a man even if he is dressed like a woman.

Toy Culture

It is telling that, in our modern culture, girls are still happy to play with “boy toys” even after they begin to internalize gender roles, but the boys avoid “girl toys.” This reflects a broader cultural reality that we now tell our girls they can do anything – wear pants, do math, climb trees, etc. But we still discourage our boys from doing “girly things”.

Parenting Choices

Each family makes their own choices about how to handle gender based toys. Some parents choose to buy only gender neutral toys, but then are surprised that their boys may play with them in “boy” ways – crashing them together, and their girls may play with them in more “girl” ways – cuddling them and creating characters.

Some parents only buy toys that are marketed to their child’s gender. So their girl’s room is filled with dolls, ponies, and pink. Their boy’s room is filled with balls, cars, and superheroes. If their child plays with toys aimed at the other gender, they may be surprised by this.

Others follow their child’s interests. My son is in many ways a stereotypical boy, and leans toward many “boy” toys – trains, cars, balls, Legos, and space toys. But he’s also wild about a toy called Shopkins – little anthropomorphized household goods that are very much marketed as “girl” toys. Here he is on the first day of kindergarten, confounding gender expectations with his combination of Lego astronaut t-shirt, and sparkly pink Shopkins backpack.

As a parent, you can choose your own path, and adapt it as you go along. There’s no right answer. It’s about finding a balance of what pleases your child and what fits in with your family values, and with the culture of peers that your child will encounter.

Learn more

For more on gender differences, click here. For more on how to make classes more gender inclusive, click here. For more on gender identity, and gender non-conforming children, click here.

Source: Big Think interview with Lise Eliot.

Photo credits: Action figure JD Hancock via photopin cc; Doll http://www.freeimages.com/browse.phtml?f=view&id=356461

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* Note: transgender women and men are the exception to this general “rule.” For example, a transgender woman was born with male genitalia and labelled a boy, but at some point in childhood or adulthood, identifies herself as female. Estimates are that perhaps 1% of people are transgender, but it’s often very hard for cisgender people to understand this. Perhaps because we form this idea of gender as a constant at this young age of 6 or 7. It is easier for a child to understand things as absolutes… either a boy or a girl. But as they get older, we can help them understand that many things are not quite so binary.

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