on a small round table are several flashlights, sheets of colored cellophone paper and small mirrors. Peter and Adrienne approach th rable, and Peter picks a flashlight urns it on, and covers the end of it with red cell shirt!" She picks up a mirror and Wow. Adrienne says, "there's redness on your Peter shines the flashlight through the red cellophane onto the mirror as Adrienne moves the mirror around until the light is reflected onto the table again. Peter and ugh and exclaim as they move the flashlight and the mirror around to Adrienne reflect the light onto different parts of the room. hat is it that Peter and Adrienne can learn as they engage in this sort of experimentation? What are the big ideas that underlie their experimen- tation with light, reflection, and color? What are the connections that we, as teachers, can discern and use to develop meaningful, integrated constructivist curriculum? These questions will be raised throughout this book, identifying and exploring several different "big ideas"-light is the first one in an attempt to help you, the classroom teacher, begin to see how constructivism underlies all aspects of chil dren's activities and experiences in the classroom. I will attempt to extend each idea into several different curriculum strands, usually with science as the core, and with mathematics, social studies, creative arts, technology, language, and literacy as the connecting realms. In the process, I will describe an array of possible materials and resources that can help you implement a broad-ranging constructivist curriculum focused around a few big ideas. I'll do this specifically with Peter and Adrienne's explorations of light in Chapter 2, but first I'd like to share the framework that this book is based on This approach-a focus on big ideas s grounded in constructivism, influenced and inspired by the work in the schools of Reggio Emilia. The core value I hold is that children are competent, confident, curious theory-builders; this value is the essence of constructivism. I have also been deeply impressed by how this value is exemplified by the schools of Reggio Emilia. In this chapter, Iwill attempt to briefly introduce the underlying shared assumptions and values coming from constructiv- ism and Reggio Emilia: my hope is that as you continue through the book these will come to life through the big ideas I have chosen to expand on. The ideas I have chosen for this book are intended to be examples: light, balance, zooming in and
and transformation. My hope is that out, sound, wacky ideas the scenarios of teach see the approach to developing these big ers and children exploring them-as a model for exploring and developing other big ideas. The approach to curriculum development put forward in this book serve as a guide for how you could approach any focal point that you may be interested in xploring. In this way, you will be able to adapt the model to the circumstances in which you find yourself. in a kin You may teaching preschool-age children, or you may be teaching be dergarten or the primary grades of elementary school. Each big idea presented here will be explored across the age ranges of early childhood, and I will explicitly ad in subsequent chapters some of the developmental modifications that you will always want in as you curriculum to your particular age group. I will also be exploring some of the cultural considerations that need to be addressed when you adapt curriculum to the particular group of children with which you work as well as the cultural issues and considerations underlying the choice of big idea that are presented here As a constructivist teacher, you can weave threads across the curriculum, and through children's experiences in those connected curriculum activities, their own world can be woven together. They can start to make implicit, if not explicit, con nections across all of the varied interesting things that go on in their lives. In doing so they create more solid and deeper ideas that last and are meaningful Constructivism: The Theoretical Framework for Big Ideas As a constructivist from my early years as a student in the 1970s, when I had the honor of studying with Jean Piaget in Geneva, my work has been an attempt to show how good practice in early childhood education can reflect constructivist theory. Although the book I wrote with Lory Britain, The Young Child as Scientist: A Constructivist Approach to Early Childhood Science Education (Chaillé & Britain, 2003), uses science as the core, it is really about responding to children who are, by nature, exploring, experimenting, and theory-building in everything they do. The broad implications of being a constructivist teacher go way beyond "science educa- tion"; the constructivist teacher does not see curriculum as segmented, and engages in a facilitative interaction that involves listening carefully-in the broadest sense of the word-to children's ideas and interests, as well as taking responsibility for provoking experimentation and problem solving by providing a rich environment in which children's work can take place with respect and joy.