“Teaching preschool science is easy”

My topic of study would be Science is easy to teach to preschoolers.  Many teachers that I have ran across in my field as pre-school educators have found it difficult to teach science.  My concern is do the teachers like science or they just do not understand science.  Without understanding of science then there would be a lack of interest.  I have worked with thirty teachers in my field and two out of thirty felt comfortable teaching science to children.

Children ages 2 to 5 years old can learn the skills of observing, classifying, making predictions, hypothesizing and making inferences.  Teachers just have to feel comfortable introducing it to the children.  For example to see a child engaged in play and mixing colors is the opportunity to ask the question of what do you think happened?  This can produce more cognitive thinking by asking what do you think will happen if…?  I am not an expert on teaching Science but as I grew to learn and experience childhood education, I found that children love science and it can be a lot of fun and discovery.  The article “The role of wonder and romance in early childhood Science Education” states that children can feel excitement with hands on activities.  Science requires hands on for stimulation of different effects of experiments.  It also reinforces the concept that hypothesis is learned in early childhood by a child observing and with imagination can construct a hypothesis. (Hadzigeorgiou, 2001) This shows how important science is to early childhood children.  Only if teachers can see how science is learn in the eyes of a two to five year old child. 

Many teachers do not even realize that they are teaching science when they teach discovery.  It seems to me that the main objective to not knowing the importance of Science is due to the learning process of our teachers.  They learn about chemistry, biology, physics and so forth about science however they cannot see how it relates to early childhood education.  Although it may be a weakness to them because of the name “Science,” they actually have to understand that it is only discovery.  In addition, teachers would be able to make science fun for preschoolers if they have fun discovering the concept with the children.

I believe the positive contribution is teachers feeling free to teach science would help our children develop cognitive, math, discovery, and social skills by learning the concept of Science. (Hadzigeorgiou, 2001)  In addition the teachers will discover and learn more about science and feel better teaching the concept. In the future children can understand natural, physical, biology, and chemistry when those years arrive and will not fear science like the teachers do now. My statement is “try it you may like it.”

• Hadzigeorgiou, Y. (2001, March).  The Role of Wonder and 'Romance' in Early Childhood Science Education. International Journal of Early Years Education. Retrieved from  http://web.ebscohost.com.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/

Policy and Procedures, are they mandated and who is accountable?

My chosen topic for the simulation is "Policy and Procedures, are they are mandated and who is  accountable?"  I chose this topic because throughout the years I have worked in Head Start, I have seen and developed policies to incorporate the state licensing rules and the head start performance standards.  It is a very difficult task to produce new policies.  However, my decision to chose this topic is to incorporate all childcare centers to follow the same guidelines for policy and procedures.  This is one way to make sure all children can receive developmentally appropriate education.  Then there is accountability, who should be accountable, should the teachers, parents, administrator or the policy makers.  Although I was involved in making procedures, the policies and procedures were not valuable to changes because no one was held accountable for not following them.

I have learned so far that when you are constructing a research, you have to take in account about the topic chosen and being able to answer questions like these:

·         Is the topic to broad?

·         How can you break it in to three subtopics?

·         Are the subtopics related to specific research you want to produce?

I did do some research on the Early childhood Policy and procedures. I came up with a website that brought great interest to me is that how the different states have different policies and procedures. They are developed by the states therefore there are many policies that are mandated by some states but not others. How can we get it the same policies and procedures mandated by all? That is my main concern.  In the article I read it stated:

"Compelling research supports the lifelong

importance of early childhood development, and hard

economic evidence shows that smart investments in early

childhood yield long-term gains. The research is clear,

and yet many state policies ignore what we know about

healthy early childhood development."

(Knitzer & Stebbins, 2007)

That statement alone made me want to know how or can we make policy and procedures the same for all states to provide vital learning for all preschool children.

I broke my topic of policy and procedures into three subtopics and that is:

1.      How can the same policy and procedures go nationwide for all Early childhood Centers?

2.      Who is accountable for not meeting the policies?

3.      How to align procedures with policies at early childhood centers?

My questions to my colleagues.

Which sup topic would be the best to use for research?

Do you have any websites that can provide some information on the sub topic that you chose for me?

Resource:

Kintzer,J., & Stebbins, H. (2007, June). State Early Childhood Policies. Retreived from NCCP, National Center for Children in Poverty website:http://www.nccp.org/publications/pdf/text_725.pdf