Sound is a particularly interesting and complex module of natural sciences (Hewitt, 2001), for the early childhood education. As a teaching tool, sound can motivate preschoolers to involve in courses and to use their existing knowledge and experience. Through teaching sound, preschoolers can be led to plan and organize opportunities in order to enrich different ways of learning and even produce original projects by using ICT.
In the proposed educational scenario we developed a series of activities so that children of the early childhood education will experience one of people’s fundamental senses, hearing. With the proposed activities we hope that preschoolers will appreciate the value of hearing and of the quiet hours of noon, they may also become respectful to people with hearing problems and also understand the foundations to create sounds.
 | Science education is too important to be left to older children and students (Ravanis, 2005; Roth et al., 2012). Scientific experiences need to be designed in order to stimulate curiosity, since it gives meaning to objects and reveals their significance (Hadzigeorgiou, 2001). He argues that scientific knowledge cannot only be built through pedagogically appropriate activities, but needs to have the element of intellectual curiosity. The scientific process can only be taught through direct experience (McDermott et al., 2000) as it is proposed in our educational scenario. So, in order to unite theory with action we employ the Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) (Roth et al., 2012), which is our base to accomplish the present scenario’s teaching activities. The framework provided by activity theorists is a coherent theoretical framework which establishes science education as participation in the community (Roth & Lee, 2006). This theory therefore goes against the idea of teaching simple operations and skills before allowing someone to engage in the more complex actions and activities (Roth, 2010) like in the proposed curricular intervention. The integration of science and mathematics is particularly relevant and appealing in early childhood education. For Jones et al. (2003) this is because the same fundamental concepts developed during the early childhood years underlie a young child's understanding of science and mathematics. Sound and sound propagation can be considered abstract concepts, because in a similar way to them material properties are often attributed. Learning such concepts requires the students to reconstruct their ideas related to matter into process views, and such reconstruction involves conceptual change (West & Wallin, 2011). In the proposed sound’s curricular intervention, ICT, which are integral parts of preschool class in today’s digital age (Oikonomidis & Zaranis, 2010), are used in several activities. This curricular intervention for helping young children appreciate focused mainly on children’s use of ICT in early childhood education. Our scenario has been developed in detail on the following website: http://karecha.yolasite.com, here..!! This teaching intervention is based on the project method and follows our previous researches for the early childhood education in science through environmental education (Kalogiannakis et al., 2010). The introduction and use of ICT by children and adults in early childhood education should be grounded in a clear understanding of the purposes, practices, and social context of early childhood education (O’Hara, 2004) and this is the main purpose of the curricular proposal of our study. The Greek “New School” New curriculums exploit the interests, the ideas and the experience of children (Ravanis, 2005). Thus, children learn how to find solutions for their concerns through creative research processes. According to the new curriculum in Greek education, “New School” emphasizes on the social role of the teacher, who should promote digital communication and learning through art (http://digitalschool.minedu.gov.gr in Greek). The teacher should also become a colleague of the preschooler, by shaping conditions of concern. Moreover, the teaching tools should be closer to children and connect with their everyday environment. Initially, we carried out a literature review on teaching sound in early childhood and we tried to include all these baselines in the proposed curricular intervention. |
OBJECTIVE - DESCRIPTION OF THE EDUCATIONAL SCENARIO
The main objective, of this educational proposal, is to stimulate preschoolers to approach the sense of sound by acting like young explorers and to propose ways in developing best practice in the use of ICT to support positive learning experiences for children. The proposed duration to accomplice the scenario is two days.
Although, because every class is different, the duration the proposed curricular intervention depends on the interest, the possibilities and the proposals which children will make, through their interactive role. So this instructive intervention is concluded when preschoolers and the teacher define it. In addition, the teacher should encourage children to repeat any activities that satisfy them and help in achieving the educational objectives.
