ASSESSMENT IS… INTEGRATIVE (Part 2 of 2)

Until approximately age 6, children are concrete learners rather than abstract learners. Engaging them in their senses – hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, and touching – is the most effective way for them to learn. Young children require tangible methods for really learning phenomena.

For example, weather is a great topic to teach young children. But why not teach it to them outside? By only discussing the phenomena of weather indoors, children are being denied opportunities to truly experience nature’s mercurial ways. Reading a book or watching a movie clip is incomparable to taking them outside during a light rain shower, when they can see the clear drops, feel their wetness, taste the water, smell them, and hear their pitter-patter against the ground.

A multidisciplinary approach to learning is imperative for expanding children’s learning. Why not integrate learning, discovery, delight, and determination with the Weather Station Learning Center?

With the Weather Station Learning Center in your outdoor classroom, kids will:

· Measure water collected in the rain gauge
· Observe the weather vane to note the wind’s direction
· Using the barometer and temperature gauges, discern variation (whether they are reading the numbers or simply observing the change)
· Become capable of documenting weather at the weather weekly panel

“Can children learn more about the weather by discussing it outdoors each day?”

Weather is an abstract concept when discussed from the confines of an indoor classroom. Outdoors weather can be a concrete learning experience that provides interaction with all of a child’s senses. A child can hear the wind, feel the wind, and see trees swaying in the wind. Air actually has a smell just before it rains, while rain affects all senses.

Items needed to create a great outdoor preschool weather station might include: thermometer, rain gauge, barometer, weather vane, and a place to record the weather at different times of the day. Each day at the end of outdoor play time, use the weather learning center as a transition point before going inside. Discuss the temperature, is it cloudy or sunny, will it rain based on the barometer, etc. The Adventurous Child web site has a great list of Early Learning Standards that pertain to the weather.

Please send me your ideas or questions on creating an outdoor classroom for preschool children.