Culture is understood as the set of knowledge, customs, ideas that characterize a group. In the same society several cultures can coexist, but there is always one dominant, called “popular culture” that is the most represented and causes the marginalization of the rest. In this way, a monocultural model develops, in which other cultures are silenced and represented from the global idea that society has about them. In the school environment we cannot see represented minority cultures such as gypsies, transsexuals, Amish and poverty (their way of life, customs, work or jobs, their history…) since silenced cultures are not mentioned in the curricular materials because they do not fall within the ideals of the power groups.
One way to change this is to encompass education across cultures. It is important, the evolution of each culture in contact and exchange with the others. In this way, we will achieve an enrichment of silenced cultures and, in turn, of popular cultures. (Enguita, 2001). In addition, the coexistence of different cultures can help and improve the acceptance of new ideas, customs, habits, etc.
References
Fernández Enguita, M. (2001). La ciudadanía en la era de la globalización. En M. Fernández Enguita, Educar en tiempos inciertos (pp. 44-60). Madrid: Morata.
Torres Santomé, J (2015). Diversidad cultural y contenidos escolares. Revista de Educación, 345. (pp. 83-110). Departamento de pedagogía, Universidad de A Coruña
Authorship
Lidia López, Paula Sengáriz, Cecilia Toca y Cristina Urrutia, 2020.
Separate subjects are extracts or selections from the different disciplines of knowledge, that are given in isolation. This selection represents the ideals and the pattern of the dominant culture, reflecting a single reality.
In them, knowledge is decontextualised from social issues, because it does not connect learnings to such situations. This makes it impossible for children to adapt properly to the society. Moreover, this produces a lack of significance, since it is impossible a connection between acquiered and previous knowledge.
Separate subjects are the knowledge, which students must achieve, being a unique and closed answer, not giving place to exploration and creativity.
From this perspective, there is a great concern for the amount of content, so there is a confrontation between learning and teaching. In addition, there is a hierarchy of subjects, and because of that, some subjects become more important than others. Finally, what we want to reflect with the video is that the existing frontiers between the different disciplines should be blurred.
References
Beane, J. A. (2005). La integración del currículum y las disciplinas del conocimiento. En J. A. Beane, La integración del currículum, pp. 61-71. Madrid: Morata.
Authorship
Yarina Alonso Mediavilla, Alicia Castanedo Cubas y Sara Gestera Aramburu, 2020.
The psychologization of social, sexist and racial problems is a way of explaining situations of marginality by focusing on the individual without taking into account the social structures of power, which are the cause of such situations of marginality.
For example, in this period of confinement, there were families that had problems in providing technological resources so that their children could follow online education; in that situation, some media blamed families for the scarcity of these resources, instead of seeing the existing responsibility in society.
Authorship
Alejandra Díaz Heredia, Marina Calleja de la Fuente, Rocío García Rasines y Ana Fanjul Cobo, 2020.
Before we start explaining and going deeper into the natural materials in the game, we must start from the premise that natural materials are an inexhaustible source of stimuli for children.
The use of natural materials in the Infant Education classroom is the theme chosen for the documentation process. We are interested in knowing the benefits of the use of natural materials in the classroom, discovering their advantages and how to use them as learning tools.
Natural materials are all those materials found in nature. There are three types: vegetable, animal and mineral materials.
Natural materials as an educational medium allow the child to get closer to the environment, to the context that surrounds them and to know its characteristics. In addition, thanks to them they learn that it is possible to play with elements provided by nature, they discover that the same material can be used for many things, that it is not necessary to buy materials or toys since these are always at their disposal and they discover that they are just as interesting, if not more so, than artificial materials.
These natural materials allow children to know and enter into one of the problems that is affecting us most, the environment. That children learn the value of reusing and recycling is essential to curb these environmental problems, such as climate change, pollution, deforestation, water shortages, species extinction … is fundamental, since they are the future and the sooner they understand the importance of having an environmental view, the greater the change.
In addition to the above, natural materials benefit and enhance children’s ability to observe, explore and learn by discovery.
We emphasize the importance of learning by discovery, through which students will possess knowledge or ideas as they discover them for themselves. The school has a fundamental responsibility and it is to manage to make each child think critically and creatively.
One way to guide children towards the construction of their own schemes is that they discover the knowledge by themselves, since in this way they will be able to organize the information and relate it to previous knowledge. In conclusion, they will be able to learn and organize information in order to use that knowledge later in the most correct way.
Learning by discovery generates and strengthens children’s self-confidence, as well as intellectual stimulation and motivation for conflict resolution, which will lead to the formation of creative thinking.
Therefore, working with natural materials, materials that are normally known by the students, simple, easily accessible and with numerous possibilities of use, is fundamental for them to construct their own meanings.
In the daily life of the youngest, there are an infinite number of experiences and materials that can be used to enhance the acquisition of knowledge and the development of critical thinking, such as, for example, a leaf floating in the water, how the leaves of the trees change according to the season?
As teachers we must start from these situations and use the different natural materials with activities that promote different knowledge and learning. We must program and plan the activities in relation to the stage of Infant Education to which it is directed and always taking into account their own interests; collect, organize and prepare the natural materials that we consider appropriate in relation to the season, the knowledge we intend to convey, etc.
It is essential to present the different materials with care, well organized, clean and with an easy access to them. In addition, to create a good atmosphere in the classroom, it is necessary to take into account the richness and variety of the materials, which are familiar to them, and, above all, we must avoid over-stimulation or, on the contrary, the absence of it. A safe, comfortable environment, with good lighting and temperature so that infants can, thanks to the possibility of these natural materials, group, sort, classify, manipulate, introduce, roll… relate and interact with their peers and with adults, perform symbolic play, concentrate and develop skills with different challenges that these involve, and a long list of etceteras.
“If by materials we want to indicate everything that can be used to make something, that serves to produce, to invent, to build, we would have to talk about everything that surrounds us, from water to land, from stones to animals, from body to words … even to meadows and clouds ” (Tonucci, 1990 en Vila & Cardo 2005, p.47).
Natural materials are all those objects that are part of our life, give quality to creativity and games, such as kitchen utensils, food, objects that nature offers us, etc. (Vila & Cardo, 2005). However, we are going to focus on those ones nature gives us, among others, we will mainly have pinecones, sticks and stones.
Since, as stated in decree 143/2007 of the BOC (2007), one of the pedagogical principles, of this stage of Early Childhood Education, is that children discover the physical and social characteristics of the environment in which they live, something that we will carry out through the manipulation and experimentation of these natural materials.
As stated by Vila & Cardo (2005), those materials are beneficial for several reasons: they offer a wide variety of sensations when manipulated, they have various qualities that market materials do not offer, they help to create play spaces, they stimulate creativity, curiosity and the desire to learn, they also offer information about the environment in which we find ourselves and make us use the exterior spaces of the school as educational places. In addition, we have them at our disposal and they are cheap.
And, we cannot forget that, “children need to explore the environment to know and understand the reality that surrounds them, enjoying a manipulative game, while creating their own experiences on the qualities of each element” (Sugrañes et al, 2012, p.74). For this reason, it is very enriching to open the school to the natural context that surrounds us.
“The persistence of the same material cannot stimulate the child to maintain his interest, nor can it satisfy the lively and tireless curiosity he has for the world around him, of which he is increasingly aware” (Goldschmied, 2000, p.49).
Finally, we would meet one of the objectives set out in article 5 of the curriculum of the first cycle of Early Childhood Education: h) Encourage the development of sensory and
perceptual capacities to promote curiosity about the immediate environment and the elements that make it up. configure, attributing a significance to them.
In conclusion, all these natural materials also allow us to work on the contents of the different areas of the curriculum, such as logical-mathematical or artistic expression.
Goldschmied, E. y Jackson, S. (2000). La educación infantil de 0 a 3 años. Madrid: Morata.
Sugrañes, E., Alós, M., Andrés, N., Casal, S., Castrillo, C., Medina, N. & Yuste, M. 2012. Observar para interpretar. Actividades de vida cotidiana para la educación infantil (2-6). Barcelona: Graó
Vila, B., & Cardo, C. (2005). Materiales de exploración. En B. V. Cardo, Material sensorial (0-3 años) Manipulación y experimentación (pp. 47- 49). Barcelona: Graó
We define materials as «the wide range of objects that are accessible to children. We also include the instruments and objects that might be useful, so that through their handling, observation, reading…learning opportunities might appear. Their value comes from the possibilities they provide, both for performing and relating.» (Red territorial de Educación Infantil en Cataluña, 2012).
Among materials, we can find many types, as some might allow you to experience, others might be better to develop logical thinking, representation or oral language and some might improve your plastic expression. However, this essay is going to focus on natural and daily materials. «Natural materials are those that we can find in our immediate environment. In other words, we are talking about objects that are not only in the nature, but also daily life objects” (Materiales sensoriales 3-6 años: manipulación y experimentación, 2005).
Besides, there is a wide range of natural materials, more than one could imagine. For example, some of them could be stones, sand, pasta, sticks, grass, soil, shells or cooking utensils, among many others. Thanks to natural materials, kids have a chance to explore the world they are surrounded by while interacting with these objects. This type of materials offer numerous benefits, from the sensory point of view to the playful one.
One of their greatest benefits is that they allow children to learn the real properties of each material. For example, if a classroom works with natural sand, kids will learn about its texture, smell, weight…while purchased or false materials do not give us that chance. On the other hand, if we discover reality through its properties, we must give children the opportunity to interact with natural materials and see what happens.
It is also worth noticing that one of the great benefits that comes with taking natural materials to the classroom is the great sensory capability that provides. Purchased materials cannot provide that, even when they try to imitate natural ones. In fact, these natural materials teach children about their environment, as well as helping them establish relationships between what they will find both inside and outside the classroom (Red Territorial de Educación Infantil en Cataluña, 2012 quoted in Ceballos, 2019).
To sum up, natural materials promote action, playing, curiosity, experimentation and learning. They also spark critical thinking in them, as they decide how to use those materials freely as they are presented to them so they can handle them. (Materiales sensoriales 3-6 años: manipulación y experimentación, 2005)
References
Ceballos, N. (2019). Materiales. [Material docente]. Recuperado del sitio web de Universidad de Cantabria, Aula Virtual, Moodle.
Florez, C. C., & Saborit, B. V. (2005). Materiales de exploración. En Florez, C. C., & Saborit, B. V. Material sensorial (0-3 años): Manipulación y experimentación (Vol. 8) (47-49). Barcelona: Graó.
Authorship
Sara Aragón Ruiz de Villa, Rebeca Barros y Celia Gómez, 2020.
Methodology is a curricular element of vital importance in preschool. It is related to how the content is going to be taught and learned. This is included in the strategies, procedures and actions. At the same time, the methodology is organized and planned in a conscious and thoughtful way, which is used by the students to learn the content and achieve the objectives.
There is not such a thing as “the best methodology”, since it depends on the class group, the contents taught, the objectives, time, space, context, teaching style, physical conditions and materials. Therefore the educator must have a battery of teaching methods that could be applied depending on the situation, some of them being expository, participatory, research based or integrating.
Methodology is a curricular element of vital importance in preschool. It is related to how the content is going to be taught and learned. This is included in the strategies, procedures and actions. At the same time, the methodology is organized and planned in a conscious and thoughtful way, which is used by the students to learn the content and achieve the objectives.
There is not such a thing as “the best methodology”, since it depends on the class group, the contents taught, the objectives, time, space, context, teaching style, physical conditions and materials. Therefore the educator must have a battery of teaching methods that could be applied depending on the situation, some of them being expository, participatory, research based or integrating.
These methods range from very closed actions, where the proposals are defined by the teacher, with no margin for variation; till total freedom of the children, where we present flexible proposals that facilitate student experimentation. The preferred methodologies in Preschool Education can be based on some of the following methodological principles: playful principle, meaningful learning, activity, socialization, family-school collaboration, globalization and personalization. All of this applied systematically, contributes to the acquisition of new knowledge and skills, thus facilitating the teaching-learning process.
Authorship
Estefanía Lázaro, Estefanía Martínez, Eva Peral y Lucía Polo, 2020.
The documentation refers to “a process that makes the daily activities, challenges, possibilities, processes and thoughts of children and adults visible and that is open to debate and reflection” (Carr and Lee 2012; Dahlberg, Moss and Pence 2007; Picchio, Di Giandomenico and Musatti 2014; Rinaldi 1998).
This process is relevant both to give visibility to the work of the school to people outside it or not, and to study the processes that are carried out within it. Since the documentation process allows to show the idea of school and childhood, it allows people to have a glimpse of what idea of education they want to show. This is why this documentation process is going to focus on the materials used by children in children´s school (0-3 years).
Materials are a fundamental part in the 0-3-year stage, they are instruments that serve as a resource for manipulation, observation, reading, etc., in this way offering different opportunities to learn, due to the possibilities of action that these provided to students. Authors such as Doménech and Viñas (1997), consider that materials have a very important role in the teaching-learning process and considering their mediating role between the educator and the surrounding environment.
In the 0-3-year stage, the children spend much of their time playing, and it is important that they in turn unconsciously develop different capacities in their development. For this development to take place it is necessary that the materials are presented in a way that captures their attention and it is at their disposal as long as they require it, it is also essential to make a good choice of the materials that are going to be presented to the students in the classroom, so that in this way learning, action, the relationships between equals, play, etc. are promoted.
The materials on which we will focus to carry out this documentation process will be natural materials, that is, objects that come from nature and, therefore, the child can find in their daily life, such as leaves, rocks, sand, sticks., etc. We will also focus on artificial materials, these are made from natural materials, such as paper, cardboard, glass or plastic.
This document will relate about the lunch time in early childhood education, giving to this moment its full pedagogical value and highlighting its relevance to stay healthy and develop healthy food practices.
By remembering our practicum experiences in different schools, we all came to the same conclusion: in the lunch time, the children who we were attending, they all were watching all kinds of videos, like movies, songs, cartoons…, instead of talking and interacting with each other. According to Ritscher (2010), to promote the development of autonomy it is highly recommended to avoid such practices with the aim of “mislead” children, since these practices only feed the child but they do not promote the capacities of taste and sensation.
However, one of these three practicum experiences is quite opposite to the rest. In this specific case, children do interact with each other about what they were interested in, as well as they help each other, and the teacher would not silence the dialogues. This way the children could talk with the classmate sitting next to them but also with the whole group. To concrete these dialogues, we will give some examples. They would ask each other about their birthdays parties, who will assist to which party, they would also ask each other about what food preferences they had, they even help each other by opening the plastic packaging and last one but not least, they would also encourage to finish their food to the classmates that were always the last ones.
Talking about the types of food that were brought to the schools, we have compared some schools with others. In some schools, there was a weekly calendar in which day was programmed with different type of food (yogurt, cereals, fruit…) to promote a varied and balanced diet. In other schools it was free choice.
A common aspect that we have found in this weekly organization of the breakfast is that some families did not respect this weekly calendar and they did not offer to their children variety of healthy foods.
As Thió (2011) defends, children have to confront situations that develop their autonomy, with challenges that gradually develop it. However, this has not been like that in our practicum experiences in the schools, because teachers did the small achievements of the students themselves, like opening the wrappers or serving water in the glasses. It did not really promote the autonomy of the children. The teachers did it that way because they wanted to finish lunch time as soon as possible to do other activities.
In conclusion, we can affirm that it is not given enough pedagogical value to lunch time in the schools, because the objective is saving time and take advantage of it to do useful activities where lunch time is excluded.
References
Ritscher, P. (2010). Comer con todo detalle. In-fan-cia, 119, 25-27.
Thió, C. (2011). La comida más allá de la nutrición: Autonomía, autoestima, responsabilidad. Aula de Infantil, 59, 44-45.
Para realizar esta actividad de documentación en la escuela infantil me he centrado en el juego y más específicamente en el juego simbólico, pues el juego tiene un papel fundamental en el desarrollo integral de los niños. El juego motiva y facilita el aprendizaje.
A lo largo de mis estudios y de las prácticas realizadas en centros educativos he podido observar la importancia del juego en el proceso de enseñanza – aprendizaje.
El juego simbólico permite desarrollar la función simbólica en los niños, la cual es muy importante en el proceso de socialización y para el conocimiento de la realidad. Los niños, son los protagonistas de su propio aprendizaje, interaccionan con otros niños y establecen roles en los que tienden a imitar la realidad o el contexto en el que se desarrollan.
La función simbólica, permite hacer visible un objeto o un acontecimiento que no está presente, a través de algún sistema de representación: gestos, imagen mental, lenguaje, dibujo, acciones significantes, juegos de ficción…
El juego simbólico permite la asociación de un objeto cotidiano con la acción que el niño realiza con él.
Mediante el juego, el niño interpreta sus experiencias y establece reglas, y todo ello le permite asimilar y aprender. El “juego simbólico” es un mecanismo de descontextualización y de desarrollo de la función simbólica.
La función simbólica es importante, pues permite asimilar de forma lúdica aprendizajes y conocimientos sobre el contexto físico y social a través de juegos, palabras, objetos… que les permiten explorar dicho contexto.
En un principio la actividad se centra en el propio cuerpo y va evolucionando progresivamente e incorporando objetos que le rodean.
Mas o menos al año y medio el niño es capaz de imitar acciones sin tener presente el objeto que las provoca y puede crear situaciones que reproducen hechos reales que ha vivido. Son estas situaciones las que llamamos juego simbólico.
El niño comienza por imitar hechos muy próximos a la situación real vivida, comienza a hacer imitaciones de situaciones que él realiza habitualmente, por ejemplo, hace como que come, duerme…para evolucionar y trasladarlas a otros, por ejemplo dar de comer. Es en este momento, cuando juega por ejemplo con muñecas y les da de comer, o lava o peina, cuando el niño imita lo que los adultos más próximos hacen con él, para finalmente no sólo imitar, sino que se identifica con lo que está representando.
A través de la observación he podido comprobar que la imaginación todavía no está muy presente en la etapa 0 -3, es más adelante cuando los niños son capaces de enriquecer y construir situaciones más complejas y compartirlas con otros niños.( jugar a mamás y papás). En el aula de dos años si he podido observar alguna situación en la que la imaginación está más presente que la imitación.
El juego simbólico es primordial para el desarrollo cognitivo del niño, pues para entender diferentes ideas y situaciones es necesario ponerlas en práctica de forma simbólica.
He podido constatar que ha través de diferentes situaciones de juego, el niño es capaz de separar los objetos reales de su significado apoyándose en un objeto sustituto que posee propiedades semejantes al objeto real, por ejemplo, un bloque de las construcciones hace de coche o un palo de madera hace de cuchara.
El juego simbólico favorece el desarrollo y adquisición del lenguaje, así como la relación y la interacción de los niños con los demás y con el mundo que les rodea.