How to "teach" a preschool program / theme based programs...?

[Inspired by Reggio]

I do not do 'themes' with my crew aside from 'seasonal and cultural celebrations' like Halloween or Christmas and so forth my program is emergent ... my job is to set the stage for learning with the environment and theirs is to choose how to use the materials in the program to meet their learning needs on their own agenda - I observe and listen and offer 'teachable moments' through their play to scafold learning and take their thinking deeper.

I find LEARNING is everywhere in life NATURALLY without planning ... just this morning at the park my 3 year old and 6 year old had an AMAZING science, math and social skills lesson all on their own with little help from me ... they were collecting rocks at the park and began a discussion about whose rock was 'bigger' and I posed the question 'hmmm wonder how we could wiegh them at the park to find out' and the 6 year old remembering how the science of a teeter tater works decided they could each place their rock on the teeter tater to see which one 'dropped' and that would be the larger rock .... they balanced even Steven so next they took their lesson to each choosing another 'rock' from their collection until one weighed more and it continued from there - they played for almost 30 minutes at this task before the park got busy and their attention went elsewhere .... but my point was that was a more meaningful and likely longer lasting lesson on 'more and less', prediction, creating hypothesis, trial and error and so forth than I ever could have PLANNED for them

I attended an amazing conference this past weekend about PLAY and childhood and how to find a curriculum through PLAY BASED learning ... here is his website if you ever get a chance to hear him in your home town GO he is inspiring and amazing speaker!

http://www.jeudenfant.ca/workshop/de...lang=en&page=2

One of the basis of discussion was him asking us to think back to the most meaningful and memorable times in our own childhood .... we listed them on papers and he 'read them off' .... and then he asked 'hey were they THEME RELATED memories of school" nope they were all natural learning through free play with peers often with NO ADULT present Were they memories of sitting with your peers making little ducks where you add fuzzy cotton balls and when you look up on the wall everyone's basically looks identical? Nope most were finger painting in WATER after a rain outside or exploring in MUD outside and so forth?

Memories of curling up with a book on the couch, memories of building forts and hide outs, playing at the park for HOURS and coming home when the street lights came on, memories of LOTS of time outside and so forth!

If we think back at the evolution of MAN ... we were raised the most INNOVATIVE CREATIVE MINDS without THEMES, without WORKSHEETS in daycare, without PLANNING their day out the wazoo ... because children of that era were allowed to PLAY ... to think creatively, to problem solve and explore, to take risks and learn from mistakes and so forth ... they developed the skills to LEARN for themselves ... they did not have people spoon feeding them flashcards to master their ABC, 123 and so forth and teach them that rather than LEARN to just regurgitate the information that the adult threw out them ... and my sister is a Professor at the University level and she will tell you that her favorite students are the HOME SCHOOLED ones where parents have chosen to keep their kids out of the 'acedemic / testing style' curriculums were there is only ONE answer to things the 'textbooks' ... because textbooks can be WRONG textbooks can be OUTDATED and if we do not think creatively about NEW ANSWERS to life's OLD QUESTIONS we will stop growing as a society!

We need to take back CHILDHOOD for children and allow them to be CHILDREN AND TO PLAY cause that IS their CURRICULUM .... and if you watch carefully you will see it is FULL of the mastering of skills and if we ADD resources to their PLAY to help ensure they are mastering new things and concepts you will be AMAZED at how smart and competent learners they will become

Now don't get me wrong ... I do love my 'circle time' however I stopped PLANNING it ... I have a collection of books, puppets, finger puppets and felt board stories in a big box and after snack in the afternoon we bring out this big box and each child gets to pick something out of it to 'share' with the group ... so some days we read 5 books and other days it is fall finger puppet songs and other days it is all felt boards or a mixture depending on their 'choice' ... but it is more meaningful to them, they REQUEST it because it is authentically theirs ... on inclement weather days we might sit for an hour or more getting multiple choices to pick

We also do some 'crafts' during seasonal celebrations however mostly our creative art is open ended exploration of mediums as children create representation of things of interest to them.