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Watching a busy trackhoe at work outside the school piqued the children's curiosity about large construction machines and led to an exploration of trackhoes. |
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Creating a chart so the children could vote on their favorite machine addressed both mathematical and literacy early learning content standards. |
Every day when the children arrived at school, they passed busy trackhoes digging in the ground. Beep, beep, beep! Every day when the children played on the playground, they heard the sounds of the trackhoes backing up.
On investigative walks to search for possible project ideas, the children of one preschool class noticed the busy big machines on the other side of the fence. One day the foreman talked to the class and named the machines that the children could see: trackhoe, bulldozer, and dump truck. Back at school, the preschoolers voted for the machine they liked best, and trackhoes became the new project.
After their discussion with the helpful foreman, the children returned to the classroom and immediately began building what they had seen out of blocks. There was a huge poster of different kinds of tractors on the wall, and the children started consulting it daily. Their favorite books were nonfiction ones about construction.
The children took frequent walks to view the industrious machines outside the school. They took photos and drew what they observed on their clipboards. Back at school, they began the project by building work sites and trackhoes with blocks. One father brought a small trackhoe to school and let each of the children "drive." After that, the preschoolers decided on their own to build a trackhoe in the classroom.
At the end of the trackhoe project, the children wrote a letter to the foreman, thanking him for answering their questions. Some of the preschoolers built smaller trackhoes and shared them, along with their newfound knowledge, with other classes.
The topic of trackhoes was highly integrative with the Ohio Early Learning Content Standards in English language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies; the Creative Curriculum goals in the physical, social-emotional, and cognitive domains; and the Head Start Learning Outcomes. The children's activities stemmed naturally from their interest in construction machines. They fulfilled literacy requirements by reading books about trackhoes, learning new vocabulary such as boom and hydraulic ram, and representing their experiences through media and play.
The children addressed mathematical standards by creating a graph for voting on their favorite construction machine. During the project, the preschoolers worked with ideas and skills related to science technology and scientific inquiry. They used critical thinking and problem solving to build both large and small trackhoes. The classmates fulfilled social studies content standards by working cooperatively and collaborating on many of the activities.