Developing a Sense of Self in the Young Child

At Trinity School for Children curriculum delivery is based in the social studies meaning the study of world around them.

The Social Studies program in our pre-school is based on the daily life experiences of young children.  The sources of the several studies over the course of the school year arise from teachers’ observations of and discussions with the children. These ideas develop around the everyday experiences familiar to the children such as: shopping, dining, transportation for people and materials, working at action-filled jobs.

These interests reveal the importance of home, family, the widening world of school, neighborhoods and workplaces which encompass the children’s experiences so far.

At this stage of their development, children want to find out about people, places and things that affect them personally.  Through dramatic play, they have opportunities to imagine and imitate what it feels like to be a parent, doctor, firefighter, or shopkeeper etc.

Teachers plan for school and neighborhood trips, which are followed with play and re-creations with open-ended materials such as blocks, paint, clay, collage, sand, water within the classroom environment.  In their work with materials, children create symbols that support and represent the integration of inner thoughts and feelings with their observations and understandings about the world around them.

Early Childhood Classrooms as Laboratories

Can you imagine the young child in a place where they can discover, learn and experiment with their own realities and build their own knowledge?  A place where a child's development can grow.

From our youngest children (infants) through our 8^th grade classes, our classrooms are working and living representations of the scientist’s laboratory and the artist’s studio. From their observations, experiences, and research, children collect and record scientific data.  They make and then discuss hypotheses that will be subjected to further testing and analyses at different stages of development.  As children work with the censorial materials of art, they can imagine and project themselves into the time and space of the culture being studied and make sense out of it.  This is why a young child's development is critical.

Ultimately these experiences allow the students to integrate and accommodate their own personal feelings and ideas; those experiences in the here and now of families and friends, and from the far away and long ago such as present day Africa, India, China or of ancient Mexico and Egypt.

The Role of Social Studies in Early Childhood Education

For the successful development of the pre school child, an environment must be constructed so that young children can investigate their own questions and their own realities. We develop this environment through the use of “social studies”.

It is through this “social studies” that we develop children’s skills in relationship thinking, problem solving, making generalizations out of details, posing questions, answering questions, working collaboratively and independently, developing a sense of caring and social responsibility, and integrating the use of skills from other academic areas. We begin developing these skills from our very youngest children in our classrooms by creating the environments that will help support these skills.

An important part of the basis of our social studies curriculum at Trinity is referred to as implicit social studies – the life of the classroom itself.  How we organize and manage the classroom – as well as the whole school – sends a powerful message to the students about values and community.  As the children bring to the school a wide array of experiences and personal knowledge the information becomes a part of this spontaneous, “implicit” curriculum. All ideas generated from our organization and thoughts of children make for opportunities to further our teaching and learning.