Before we went on winter break I captured these pictures from the morning preschool sessions. 🙂

 Using puzzle pieces and a small wooden bowl I set up a provocation for the morning. 🙂

  Here is  a small example of emergent curriculum.  I based this provocation off of what I saw happening in class.  The week before a three year old child used dominoes and cars to create pictures, so I thought why not try the same idea using puzzle pieces.  Again, I do not expect and am not crushed if a child does not take interest in a provocation, it is a learning process for both myself and the students.

  What ended up happening is the puzzle pieces were moved to a piece of fabric in the Reading Corner and buttons were added to the bowl.  And that is when a child’s imagination took over! 🙂  The puzzle pieces and buttons became cat food!  And as I was documenting this emergent process I also observed a strong interest in cats.  This particular child has a pet cat, so no surprise with the interest.  This is leading me to adding a few more cat books to our Reading Corner and non-fiction ones as well.  

  Here is an example of  little bear and a cat book.  Since interest in cat behavior is showing up in play so strongly, I am going to incorporate facts about cats and see what types of provocations I can set up to entice young children’s interests in cats or other animals.  The content areas that will be covered will include literacy, art, and science.  How interested the children are in the topic will determine how deep we go into the content areas, but I can tell you from years of experience that when young children are interested in a topic, deep and meaningful learning experiences are the result.  And the wonderful thing about it is that is all stems from the children and is not topics forced onto them by the Teacher. 🙂

Heidi Scott, BA & MIT

The Marigold School of Early Learning