Last summer, Tami Sanders planted a sunflower garden with her preschool class in the Yuba City Unified School District—and the garden turned into a summer-long project.

“The garden is in our play area,” says Sanders. “When [children] were riding their bikes, they noticed, ‘Hey, the seeds are sprouting!’ So they all went to see.” Sanders encouraged more observations: “How many days did they take to sprout?”

“The learning that comes from [following kids’] genuine interests is amazing! Much more meaningful learning comes from them,” says Sanders, who has been doing project-based learning for the past 15 years.

Developing children’s interests: Yuba City Unified Early Childhood Program

Math and literacy

Sanders and other teachers “brainstorm together” about how to “intertwine” projects with district math and literacy goals.

“With the sunflower project it was easy,” Sanders says. Children were fascinated with the sunflowers’ growth. “‘Last week it was only up to my knee!’ ‘It’s taller than you but shorter than the teacher.’ So I put out a yardstick and measuring tape and they started discovering inches and feet,” she adds.

Sanders would ask “‘What did you discover?’ Someone found a worm, so I wrote ‘worm’ on the board. ‘Where did you find the worm?’ ‘In the dirt.’ I wrote ‘dirt’ and drew a line to ‘worm.’ I wrote words with pictures—‘grasshopper,’ ‘ladybug’—and put them in writing and art areas. Children wrote and drew about the garden.”

Science and art

“[The children] wanted to pull weeds,” Sanders recalls, “so we talked about how to tell what was weeds. They discovered bugs, toads, spiders. We gave them clipboards so they could draw or write what they were seeing. We let children observe [the bugs] with magnifying glasses.” They counted legs—insects had six, spiders had eight. “We also talked about how we have to set them free.”

“We brought worms in [and] fed them lettuce and potatoes,” she adds. “One child asked, ‘Will they eat newspaper?’” It turned out they did.

When bees swarmed around the sunflowers, “children started trying to make bees,” she says. “I brought in pictures of bees, coffee filters, egg cartons, black and yellow paper. But I didn’t tell them how to make bees—I wanted them to be their bees.”

Parents contribute

One parent, a beekeeper, came to talk with the children. Others contributed materials. “I do a project board so they know what we’re working on,” says Sanders. Local stores donated supplies.

They are learning

Sanders can see benefits of the project approach in “the language that comes from [children] discovering their own stuff. They have a huge vocabulary. Their phonemic awareness is unbelievable because of [all] the communication.”

Children also learn social skills. “Older kids teamed up with younger kids. Bilingual kids teamed up with Spanish-speaking students, and translated for them,” she adds.

Higher-level skills: Salida Child Development Program

After the Salida Unified School District adopted a project-based curriculum, “we noticed [children’s] language skills improved,” says Jacki Gray-Hill, Literacy Coordinator of the Child Development Program.

Projects “are based on children’s questions, [so] children develop higher-level thinking skills,” adds Education Coordinator Tanya Vander Weide.

Some teachers, says Vander Weide, found it hard to “let go of control [and let] children’s questions guide the study. [Others] thought it would be more work. But they found being child-focused was less work. Children’s curiosity lead them to activities. When studying rocks, [children] discovered they could write with stones and sort their collection.”

Methods of investigation

“Math skills are strengthened,” says Vander Weide. “[Children] do surveys: number of windows in your house, what kind of food you like. Or in a project on cars, they might list four colors, then tally [cars of each color].”

“Visiting experts”

“One class did a house project,” says Vander Weide. “One of the fathers did framing work, so he brought in wood and [helped] each child make a little house.” Parents have been visiting experts on cooking, pets, gardening.

In a car project, “the [school] janitor showed children how he washes a car,” Gray-Hill adds. Children visited a mechanic’s shop and a car wash.

Teamwork

“One class built a car together,” says Vander Weide. “Kids were in charge of making different parts. They shared with the teacher what materials they thought they would need. Some didn’t work—maybe they weren’t strong enough. They were testing hypotheses to see if they were correct.”

Class art gallery: Westside Children’s Center

Two-and-a-half-year-olds spent two months creating an art gallery in Yanira Vasquez’s class at Culver City’s Westside Children’s Center. Children presented it to parents at an evening event—and developed important skills and confidence.

Teachers brought in “yarn, pasta, playdough, fingerpaint, watercolor,” says Vasquez, “so [children could] experiment with different textures and materials. We made one room an art gallery.”

Verbal skills

Before the event, each child chose something to display. When the parents arrived, children went up to say what they did and why they picked each piece—“because she used purple and I like purple,” “I made this for my mommy and daddy,” “I made a lion.” Vasquez says, “They were able to verbalize what they were feeling. They were proud of what they had done!”

Social awareness

Working on a group project helped children develop greater social awareness and skills. Children would say to each other, “You did a good job. I like your painting.”

Sometimes a child worried he’d done something wrong because his project was different. “That gave us a chance to explain that everyone does it differently,” says Vasquez. “You did it the way you liked it,” and that was just fine.

Resources

• Project Approach: information on projects with children. English and Chinese. www.projectapproach.org
  
  
• Early Childhood Research and Practice: descriptions of projects done by teachers. English and Spanish. http://ecrp.uiuc.edu/byproject.html
  
  
• Tami Sander’s sunflower garden project, http://kidsworldexploration.com/id80.html
  
  
• Teacher guides (both by Sylvia Chard, Scholastic):
  
  * Project Approach: Making Curriculum Come Alive 
  
  * Project Approach: Managing Successful Projects
  
  
• Engaging Children:
  
  * Project Approach, Second Edition by Lilian Katz and Sylvia Chard, Ablex Publishing
  
  * Handbook for Planning Child-Centered Curriculum, by Deb Curtis and Margie Carter, Redleaf Press
  
  
• Video: Thinking Big: Extending Emergent Curriculum Projects, Margie Carter, Sarah Felstiner, Ann Pelo, Redleaf Press
  
  

Extra resources from the Children’s Advocate bulletin

• Beginning the Journey: Project Approach with Toddlers, an article from Early Childhood Research and Practice, describes how two teachers in Mexico City adapted the project approach to work better with toddlers.
  
  
• A to Z Teacher Stuff offers two discussion threads on the project approach at http://forums.atozteacherstuff.com/showthread.php?t=65663 and http://forums.atozteacherstuff.com/showthread.php?t=7503
  
  
• The Illinois Early Learning Project offers several resources on the project approach:
  Display and Documentation Techniques
  Helping Preschoolers Represent What They Learn
  Concluding the Project
  
  
• Interview with Sylvia Chard from the Project Approach, an article from Edutopia, discusses project learning.
  
  
• Project-Based Learning Handouts, from the Salida Unified Child Development Program, offer tips for classroom projects, including selecting topics, developing project ideas, and getting information from children. Includes a handout for parents in English and Spanish.
  
  

To stay informed about new and upcoming Children’s Advocate articles, related resources, and advocacy opportunities, sign up for our Children’s Advocate bulletin