On November 4,\u00a0 I will be participating in a joint interest forum workshop at the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) conference in Los Angeles. The idea for the workshop was born out of a forum meeting last year in Orlando, at the 2015 conference.\u00a0 I had just come from the first integrated forum workshops in which the Young Children\u2019s Spirituality interest forum, the Play, Policy, and Practice interest forum, the Nature interest forum, and the Peace interest forum came together to discuss how these topics work together to benefit young children.\u00a0 I happen to be sitting next to two members of the Science forum; and it so happens that I teach an online, play-based course for Champlain\u2019s graduate program in early childhood education, titled Math and Science for Young Children!<\/p>\n
So, all excited about the success of the integrated workshop, I began a discussion with these two lovely women from the Science interest forum which led to an invitation to come together in 2016.\u00a0 Today, I am both excited and a bit nervous about how it will all evolve.\u00a0 I see that some of the educators I am working with come with an agenda of \u201cwhat children should learn through their play?\u201d,\u00a0 thus believing that guiding questions should be offered,\u00a0 questions like\u00a0 \u201cwhat happens to the water when it is left out?\u201d.\u00a0 Others of us believe in the value of the experience of play itself. I am very grateful that the Science interest forum has embraced the idea of spirituality. For me, the partnership lies in the production of wonderment, awe, and joy in learning. When a child makes a new discovery, new joy and new inquiry are sparked.\u00a0 The spiritual embryo is once again ignited.\u00a0 Such moments remain the force to knowing and becoming that Montessori spoke of.\u00a0 This is what I hope to share at this year\u2019s workshop.<\/p>\n
Also at this year\u2019s conference, I will be teaming up with Jennifer Mata McMahon from DePaul University, and Michael Haslip from Drexel College.\u00a0 We have designed a research study that grew out of last year\u2019s NAEYC presentation and the need to know what educators are doing in their classrooms to support children\u2019s spiritual nourishment.\u00a0 During this workshop, participants will be completing the survey, followed by a comparison and discussions of our findings to their answers.\u00a0 I look forward to seeing how this all unfolds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On November 4,\u00a0 I will be participating in a joint interest forum workshop at the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) conference in Los Angeles. The idea for the workshop was born out of a forum meeting last year in Orlando, at the 2015 conference.\u00a0 I had just come from the first Read the full article…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5172,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[39],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/growing-wonder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/growing-wonder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/growing-wonder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/growing-wonder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5172"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/growing-wonder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=489"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/growing-wonder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":490,"href":"https:\/\/growing-wonder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489\/revisions\/490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/growing-wonder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/growing-wonder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/growing-wonder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}