In every class, other then art, apparently I have a problem with designing age appropriate and well spaced out curriculum. I recently designed a science themed trip to the metropolitan museum of art for what I thought would be appropriate for first graders. The questions and activities were all beyond the capacity of a typical six year old. After being told that, I reviewed my paper and realized that even though the trip, activities, and exploratory questions were well thought out, it wasn’t developmentally appropriate. I could still take the six graders to the same exhibit in the museum, I would just have to frame the activities differently and ask more general questions that they can understand.
I told this story because if reminds me of the slide show Ms. Gwathmey showed us about different levels of students studying their environment using the arts. Bank Street does a really excellent job of allowing children to ‘do’ and learn about the world around them. The pictures in the slide show showed various studies of the environment from the age of 4-10. Each age group was studying their environment at a level they could understand. The 4/5 year olds went to Central Park and recreated a map of the park; the 5/6 created their own bakery; 7/8 built a model of the Hudson River and learned its history; the 8/9 studied New Amsterdam and participated in art projects and crafts that would have been done at that time; 9/10 studied the continent of Africa and again, participated in art projects and crafts that would have been done in the places they studied. With each additional age, the children were able to explore an environment in a slightly more abstract way. This kind of thinking is only possible once the concrete ways of thinking have been exercised.
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