Category: Child Development Lessons

P.I.E.S: Puzzle Piece Activity

I love when teachers take ideas from the website and add to them!  That is exactly what Shannon Stevens, a FCS teacher from Ohio, did with my P.I.E.S: The Areas
of Development lesson. Shannon created the P.I.E.S: Puzzle Piece Activity to use with students in her Child Development class. She wanted to add a component for the students to share their knowledge of P.I.E.S. along with something that could be displayed in the classroom for other classes to enjoy. Additionally, she wanted a technology free activity!

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Prenatal Mystery Bags

you’re like me, you don’t always want to teach things the same way; you want a refresh!  When teaching about prenatal development and the changes associated with both mother and baby, the Prenatal Mystery Bags assignment offers just that…a refresh!  This ready to teach assignment is one I did years ago, but decided it needed an update so, in this post, you will find two different ways to use this with your students.  Choose the one that works best for you and incorporate many of the 4 C’s (communication, critical thinking, collaboration and creativity) as your students work through the activity!

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Problem Based Learning: Parenting Dilemma

Problem based learning projects are a great way to engage your students and incorporate some rigor.  How, you ask?  Problem based learning projects incorporate
many, and sometimes all of the the 4 C’s; Critical Thinking, Communication, Collaboration and Creativity.  The Family Medical Leave Work Dilemma takes a real world problem inspired by a Washington Post article and provides just enough information for students to come up with a viable solution.  If you’ve ever wanted to try problem based learning in your family or parenting classes, why not start with this one?

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Brain Puzzle

Teaching about the brain is one of my all time favorite units in Child Development! I find it interesting and feel like I’m teaching students something new in a fun way. If you’ve used my Navigating the Brain lesson, you know that I had students create a Play-Doh brain. While I still like that assignment, I wanted something a bit more challenging. The Brain Puzzle is a creative, engaging way to apply the information learned and can be used as a review activity or an assessment!

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Toddlers: Intellectual Activities

Did you know that when it comes to Toddlers: Intellectual Activities there are seven categories? This post provides some background information around them before students do an analysis for understanding.

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Crayon Life Lessons

Who knew something as simple as crayons could teach some important life lessons? The Crayon Life Lessons teaches students a variety of lessons about acceptance, diversity and uniqueness that can be used in all settings from home, to school, to work in a unique way. I used it in my child development classes, but it could be used in any class as an enrichment activity!

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The Brain & ACES Hyperdoc

With so many children dealing with adverse conditions and trauma, this lesson is critical when teaching child development. The Brain & ACES Hyperdoc helps to understand the impact on a child’s development.

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The Value of Cardboard Toys

Toys purchased from stores can be expensive only to have children play with them for a brief period of time before setting them aside for something else. Empty boxes and containers, on the other hand, make great toys and allow for way more imagination and creativity. Better yet, they don’t cost you anything extra as you were probably going to recycle them anyway! Let students learn about the value of cardboard toys as they explore and engage in the following lesson.

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Children & Art

There are many aspects of children and art that can be incorporated into a child development class. When exploring Children & Art, you can look at everything from its benefits to development, to why it needs to be open-ended and focus on the process over the product to how we talk about it with children. This lesson and corresponding activities infuses all of the above! Have a look to see how you can include children & art into your repertoire!

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Multiple Intelligence’s Toy Bag Project

If you teach about Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences and are looking for a fresh project, I may have just saved you some time creating something new! The Multiple Intelligence’s Toy Bag Project is an engaging assignment that can be done hands-on or digitally with your students depending on your time and technology availability!

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