Educating Young Children Volume 1 – Spring 2025 | Page 29

children gathered around and watched as we cut the head from its thick stem. They launched in with questions: 4-year-old Eric asked,“ What is that?”; 3-year-old Joey called out,“ What are you doing? What’ s going on here?”

As an early childhood educator for over 25 years, my practice has been informed by my goal to engage and support young children’ s learning. What this means has deepened and evolved as I’ ve taught in various settings and served as director of a Head Start early learning program in New Jersey. Here, I share how my former coteacher and I intentionally addressed child choice and learning goals through individual, small-group, and whole-group activities in our preschool classroom.

Lesson planning can be daunting. It’ s more than creating a single activity to capture children’ s interest for a certain amount of time. It’ s about designing and implementing developmentally appropriate experiences over time that strengthen children’ s thinking, deepen their inquiry, and support their identities as learners. Children need time, materials, and support to make connections across activities. I’ ve come to view children’ s seemingly simple words and actions as evidence of their minds at work. This evidence serves as a powerful teaching and planning tool.

For example, I observed how one child, Hannah, connected her learning across multiple experiences. One morning, she watched the rain through the window with the other children. Then we discussed rain together during circle time. She participated in a small-group activity later that day: I placed R, A, I, and N letter cards on the floor. She read the word rain and said,“ Plants need water to grow.” This led Liza and me to plan another small-group activity where the children explored different tools and materials, including the sunflower head, to mark their canvases with water-soluble paints. In the process, they demonstrated an indicator of one of