Documenting the Journey
Why should parents, nannies and child care providers be the keepers of memories? Of course, the most obvious is to document the child’s milestones and childhood for years to come. However, there are other reasons. To use these experiential learning adventures to build new skills and connect to prior knowledge is not only educational but impacts language, intellectual and the social/emotional development of a child.
Many of you may be returning from a spring break adventure or planning a family vacation with the charges this summer. Use the ideas in this blog to document your journey and extend the learning!
Upon the return from a family vacation, weekend trip or just an outing at the zoo, it is important to extend the learning and preserve the memories. Ways to document the journey and continue to build skills and enjoy memories will be divided into 3 categories: Skill Building, Keepsakes, and Reflection. Be open to explore and think outside the box. Allow your creativity and that of your children to personalize special travel experiences. Remember this is an important step to include for the learning process to retain not only content knowledge but also allow for the child to build self-confidence, self-esteem and self-awareness.
Let’s begin with a few ideas to focusing on the first category of Skill Building. Here are some suggestions:
Making a book with photos
- Pick a theme or category while on the journey.
- Take pictures of multiple objects, animals, plants or places.
- Create a flip book. This will let the child practice recalling what they saw and describe new facts.
- Write clues or interesting facts about each picture.
- Print photos and adhere to corresponding pages.
- Allow child to share their book with family, friends or classmates.
- This gives the child an opportunity to teach others about what they learned.
Resources for Documenting Early Childhood Learning
NAYEC: The Power of Documentation in Early Childhood Learning
Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority
Pinterest: Documenting Children’s Learning
A special thank you to INA board member Angela Riggs for sharing this blog. Angela chairs the INA’s Education and Exam Committee, is the ECE Director at Sullivan University and the owner of Personalized Educational Adventures.