“IF YOU HAVE SUN AND YOU HAVE RAIN YOU GET A RAINBOW”: CREATING MEANINGFUL CURRICULUM

Abstract

The inclusion of children's ideas, theories, or questions into the curriculum planning process is recommended as appropriate early childhood practice (Bredekamp & Copple, 1997; Bredekamp & Rosegrant, 1995; Jones & Nimmo, 1994). Studying how to identify children's interests and ultimately the planning for relevant experiences cannot be simply reduced to a set of strategies or recipes. In primary classrooms and in child care centers, educators struggle with ways to develop meaningful experiences that are not arbitrary lessons prescribed for a unit or a cluster of activities associated with a theme. Revisiting children's ideas through the careful study of observations that include transcripts or videotapes is useful to the process of developing curriculum for young children. However, the practice of closely understanding children's words and actions as central to curriculum planning is not common practice in the majority of early childhood classrooms in the United States. Through the award of a professional development grant, the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) Early Childhood Program offered a unique practicum experience that explored some of the underlying principles of the Reggio Emilia approach to promote staff development (Cadwell, 1997; Edwards, Gandini, & Forman, 1994; Hendrick, 1997). Inspired by principles from the Reggio Emilia approach (Edwards, Gandini, & Forman, 1994), practicum students and their instructor worked in a community preschool examining ways to use observation and documentation for planning curriculum. Practicum students and the instructor videotaped children's actions and conversations for review with each other. Daily discussions among the students and instructor emerged from the following questions. What might the children be saying? What are the children's ideas and theories? What are the children's interests? What do the children know? Are our questions and comments meaningful to the children's ideas or actions? (Hendrick, 1997; Cadwell, 1997). The practicum students studied