by Lorrie Holmes
Children enjoy singing catchy songs that breathe life into this colourful season – especially those offering actions and visual prompts! Many classroom springtime favourites focus on blooming flowers, insects, sunny weather, and outdoor activities. From The Itsy Bitsy Spider to I’m a Little Teapot, Bringing Home A Baby Bumblebee to I Love Bugs, The Ants Go Marching and of course, the infamous The Garden Song by Charlotte Diamond, each of these songs tell a fun story that include lyrics that can easily be acted out by the children, resulting in a deeper level of understanding in and appreciation for springtime – the season of new beginnings.
Starting off with our list of recommended books, we begin with two titles, Adventure With Moose and Les adventures D’Ori.
ReadAbilities Publishing House Ltd. – Celebrating Neurodiversity in Children’s Literature
Samantha Clusiau-Lawlor and Renée Tessier, two long-time friends from Ottawa, are on a mission to fill a crucial gap in children’s literature. As the co-founders and authors behind ReadAbilities Publishing House Ltd., they noticed a significant lack of books featuring neurodiverse characters. Determined to make a difference, they set out to create a series of books that not only educate children and families about neurodiversity but also help remove any stigma associated with it.
When I first became a Kindermusik teacher many years ago, I asked myself where to begin with introducing littles to basic music principles such as pitch, dynamics, tempo, rhythm and solfege. Once I was ready to write my first lesson plan, I became a bit nervous. Because I had started off with teaching parent participation classes, I asked myself, as a parent, how I would like music to be introduced to my kids, then I started to relax as the answer became very obvious to me!
An education capable of saving humanity is no small undertaking; it involves the spiritual development of man, the enhancement of his value as an individual, and the preparation of young people to understand the times in which they live.”
DR. MARIA MONTESSORI
Even though I’ve worked in preschool classrooms and after school programs for over a decade, I have never thought this deeply about how children learn best. Thinking past the curriculum and the philosophy of most education programs, I was brought deeper into what this all meant. These questions came to me after my visit to Westside Montessori Academy which is when I began to fully appreciate the benefits our children receive from a Montessori education.
Written by Lorrie Holmes
Can kids develop their artistic skills through Creative Play? Does this include developing skills in music, songwriting, creative writing, drama and dance through play? Here are six ways to show you that they can! It’s certainly what I experienced during my years spent leading creating arts classes with children from ages 3 to 12. In fact, the more creative freedom that’s given, the more focused children are on developing a skill or completing a project to the best of their ability.
What better way to start your Spring lesson planning than with the tried and true book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, which continues to expand into a whole collection of titles you can use to plan a fun Spring Classroom Theme around!
This story, written and illustrated by the infamous Eric Carle, was a must use every spring in my own preschool lesson planning! The original story offers such unique artwork in a style that is Eric Carle’s alone, and pulls the children into the fun activity of going through all of the days of the week as this very hungry caterpillar munches and crunches his way through a whole lot of food choices, some healthy and some sneaky!
Interviewed by Lorrie Holmes
As Swiss Psychologist, Jean Piaget, once stated, “Knowledge is a consequence of experience.”
There is a lot of truth to this statement and as education continues to evolve, Project-Based Learning (PBL) has become more recognized. In fact, many schools have actually taken on a Project Based Learning Model in offering their students the opportunity to apply many of their core learnings to these projects as part of their curriculum.
Today we are sharing an interview I recently conducted for BC Parent Newsmagazine on two leaders in our education community on project based education – Paul Romani, Director of Pear Tree School and Owen Hann, V.P. of Operations for Steamoji – about what Project Based Learning means to them and their students, how they go about offering such emergent programs, and what they feel the benefits are for the students who engage in these programs.
Written by Kathy Eugster, MA
We are learning from the fields of neuroscience and child-development how important it is for parents to play with their kids. That children need many positive, face-to-face interactions with attentive, sensitive, and responsive parents or caregivers for healthy brain and nervous system development. Play activities between parent and child are excellent ways to provide these necessary interactions to children.
Parent-child play offers unique benefits to children over children’s peer play or independent play because parents are older and wiser and can support their child’s development in a variety of different ways. Many research studies have found that play between a parent and child is one of the best ways to strengthen the parent-child relationship.
Written by Lorrie Holmes – story originally published in BC Parent!