Category: Child Development

Assessments in a Bag

This idea came about because I was looking for an alternate way to assess my students about their knowledge of a particular unit or topic besides administering a test.  Instead, I developed a partner or small group interactive, cooperative based…

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Pinterest Themed Activities for Children’s Storybooks

Pinterest in the classroom? Absolutely! Pinterest is an online bulletin board where you can keep track of internet ideas and sources under specific categories or boards that you create. Like me, my students enjoy Pinterest so I thought why not…

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Technology & Toddlers Activity

It’s hard to escape the children’s toy lesson without addressing the prevalence of Apps for Smart phones and tablets as the new toys for toddlers. Give it just a couple of years and this lesson will be obsolete as the students you’ll be teaching grew up playing more with Apps than physical toys and they will have no idea why that may be a problem. Regardless of your bias, we need to teach tomorrow’s child care workers & parents how to evaluate Apps that are good for children from the ones that are fluff.

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Diaper Cost Analysis Project

What is the cheapest way to buy diapers? Do subscriptions to Amazon Prime or memberships to wholesale clubs really save you money on diapers? Why not do the math? This is a complex problem but easy enough to understand and develops student’s problem solving skills.

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What do Babies Think? Alternative Activity

This is an activity I came up with after reading the What do Babies Think Lesson previously shared on the website. I couldn’t assign the experiment included in the lesson because my students didn’t have access to children in that age range, but I did find a site where students could find their own interesting picture of a baby and literally put baby’s thoughts into words. It’s called “Blabberize” and it’s super easy to use and free and my students had a great time with it. I made a class account and students just saved their work individually which also saved trees and in the end they can view each others work very easily.

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Bedtime Fears & Fear Me Not Community Service Lessons

This amazing lesson is the Winner of our Child Development Lesson Plan Competition! The goal of this lesson is to explore bedtime issues/fears of children & how to respond to them. Students will also create a community service project called “Fear-Me-Not” characters to help children in abuse shelters feel more secure and safe during their stay.

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What do Babies Think?

The idea for this lesson came from Alison Gopnik’s work studying babies minds. “What’s it like to be a baby? It’s like being in love in Paris for the first time after you’ve had three double espressos” she says. This lesson is an introduction to scientific studies on human beings and aims to replicate Ms. Gopnik’s broccoli vs. goldfish empathy experiment.

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Feeding Young Children–Picky Eaters Lesson

In this lesson students will determine if they were or still are picky eaters. They will view a you tube video of the Arthur cartoon entitled “DW The Picky Eater” and fill out a graphic organizer while viewing. Following the video students discuss the information from the graphic organizer and brainstorm with a partner some fun, creative ways to get a picky eater to eat. These ideas may be based on personal experiences. Students will share their quick ideas with the group and then individually, students will investigate further by completing the mini poster computer project entitled “DW’s Top Ten Suggestions for Feeding the Picky Eater” which will be shared orally with the class when finished.

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Interactive Notebooks

Serina wrote in asking if I had any resources for family consumer science interactive notebooks. Unfortunately a typical google search doesn’t produce anything but interactive notebook materials for science, English, and history classes. However, Interactive Notebooks are a great fit for Family and Consumer Science classes!

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Preemie Caps

I felt as if the children didn’t truly understand the size of a premature baby until I presented them with the Preemie Caps project. Using the sewing machine students will make very basic stitches to make hats for premature babies that eventually get donated to a local Children’s Hospital.

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