Open Educational Resources by Subject Disciplines

Preschool Methods was put together to enhance students knowledge around developmental domains for children 3-5 years of age while highlighting Capable, Confident, and Curious: Nova Scotia’s Early Learning Curriculum Framework.

We as early childhood educators are children’s guides while they develop, explore and make sense of the world around them. Through play preschoolers develop life skills that will transfer and scaffold their learning in all aspects of development for the rest of their lives.

This book explores a holistic, artistic, and integrated approach to understanding the developmental connections between music and children. This book guides professionals to work through music, harnessing the processes that underlie music learning, and outlining developmentally appropriate methods to understand the role of music in children’s lives through play, games, creativity, and movement. Additionally, the book explores ways of applying music-making to benefit the whole child, i.e., socially, emotionally, physically, cognitively, and linguistically.

Supported by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs and located at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College, the IRIS Center develops and disseminates free, engaging online resources about evidence-based instructional and behavioral practices to support the education of all students, particularly struggling learners and those with disabilities. These resources, designed to bridge the research-to-practice gap, are intended for use in college teacher preparation programs, in professional development (PD) activities for practicing professionals, and by independent learners. The array of IRIS resources includes modules, case studies, information briefs, course/PD activities, a high-leverage practices alignment tool, and an online glossary of disability-related terms as well as supporting products to enhance their use in coursework and PD activities.

I am an emeritus educator of children and adults and a student of both. Now that I am retired I have time to create the kind of site I wish I had encountered long ago – one that had practical ideas with nothing to market. Over the years since 1970 when I started learning about schools for young children, I developed resources for early childhood educators and families. I am making available as much as I can for anyone to take forward in the way they wish. 143 pages of stuff here to explore—all aimed at what we can do to create conditions for young children in the years before common school age.