12.4: Introducing to the Foundations

The preschool learning foundations for History and Social Science are organized into five broad categories or strands:

• Self and Society: children’s growing ability to see themselves within the context of society
• Becoming a Preschool Community Member (Civics): becoming responsible and cooperative members of the preschool community
• Sense of Time (History): developing understanding of past and future events and their association with the present
• Sense of Place (Geography and Ecology): developing knowledge of the physical settings in which children live and how they compare with other locations
• Marketplace (Economics): developing understanding of economic concepts, including the ideas of ownership, money exchanged for goods and services, value and cost, and bartering^[1]

Supporting Self and Society

An early childhood education setting acquaints young children with people who have different backgrounds, family practices, languages, cultural experiences, special needs, and abilities. In their relationships with teachers and peers, preschoolers perceive how others are similar to them and how they are different, and gradually they learn to regard these differences with interest and respect rather than wariness or doubt. This is especially likely if early childhood educators incorporate inclusive practices into the preschool environment. The relationships that young children develop with others in the preschool provide opportunities for understanding these differences in depth and in the context of the people whom the child knows well. One of the most valuable features of a thoughtfully designed early childhood program is helping young children to perceive the diversity of human characteristics as part of the richness of living and working with other people.

Young children are beginning to perceive themselves within the broader context of society in another way also. Their interest in adult social roles, occupations, and responsibilities motivates pretend play, excitement about visits to places such as a fire station or grocery store, and questions about work and its association with family roles and family income. Teachers can help young children explore these interests as children try to understand the variety of adult roles

1.0 Culture and Diversity

2.0 Relationships

3.0 Social Roles and Occupations

Teachers can support children’s development of the self and society foundations with the following:

• Practice a reflective approach to build awareness of self and others by examining your own attitudes and values
• Maintain a healthy curiosity about the experiences of others; ask authentic questions to build understanding
• Partner with families in goal setting and program design; learn individual family values and each family’s goals for their child’s care and education
• Prepare an active learning environment that incorporates the full spectrum of the human experience including diversity of cultures, ethnicities, gender, age, abilities, socioeconomic class, and family structure
• Create an environment, both indoors and outdoors, that is inclusive, meaning every child can fully participate and engage in the learning environment regardless of gender, home language, or abilities
• Address children’s initial comments and inquiries about diversity with honest, direct communication
• Have discussions about similarities and differences
• Sing songs and share stories in different languages
• Plan meaningful and authentic celebrations with support of the children and families
• Read and talk about books that:
  • Accurately represent the lives and experiences of children
  • Deal with the theme of friendship and relating to others
  • Include images and stories of different workers
• Develop meaningful, nurturing relationships with the children in your program
• Prepare an early learning environment and daily routine that foster peer interaction
• Support children’s development of interaction strategies and relationship building skills through:
  • Modeling
  • Explicit instruction during large-group times
  • Coaching and providing prompts
• Offer sensitive guidance through challenges
• Facilitate positive social problem solving
• Provide children with play props for exploring occupations and work settings
• Get to know the workers in your community
• Convey respect for the roles of adults who work at home
• Highlight the roles that elders play in family life and in society
• Include the pursuit of further education among work options
• Invite family members to share their work experiences, including those that may diverge from traditional gender roles
• Talk about future career goals
• Visit community stores, businesses, and service providers to observe workers in action^[2]

Supporting Becoming A Preschool Community Member (Civics)

An early childhood program is a wonderful setting for learning how to get along with others and for understanding and respecting differences between people. It is also an important setting for learning about oneself as a responsible member of the group. In an early childhood education setting, young children are enlisted into responsible citizenship for the first time outside of the family, encouraged to think of themselves as sharing responsibility for keeping the room orderly, cooperating with teachers and peers, knowing what to do during group routines (e.g., circle time), cleaning up after group activities, participating in group decisions, supporting and complying with the rules of the learning community, and acting as citizens of the preschool.

Many formal and informal activities of an early childhood education setting contribute to developing the skills of preschool community membership. These include group decision making that may occur during circle time (including voicing opinions, voting on a shared decision, and accepting the judgment of the majority); resolving peer conflict and finding a fair solution; understanding the viewpoints of another with whom one disagrees; respecting differences in culture, race, or ethnicity; sharing stories about acting responsibly or helpfully and the guidance that older children can provide younger children or children with less positive experiences about being a preschool community citizen.

1.0 Skills for Democratic Participation

2.0 Responsible Conduct

3.0 Fairness and Respect for Other People

4.0 Conflict Resolution

Teachers can support children’s development of the civics foundations with the following:

• Share control of the preschool environment with children
• Create community rules with children’s input and plan opportunities to continue discussing them with small- and large-group meetings
• Promote a sense of connection and community by using terms such as “we” and “our” when speaking with children and adults
• Incorporate class meetings into the daily routine of older preschool children
• Support freedom of thought and speech in individual investigations, as well as in planned group experiences
• Generate community rules and expectations to protect the rights of each individual and to create a community of trust and security
• Engage children in community brainstorming and problem solving
• Make group decisions when appropriate
• Acknowledge emotions related to group brainstorming and decision making
• Model the skills and behavior you want children to exhibit
• Use guidance to redirect children to more appropriate actions and behavior by using positive descriptions of what you expect children to do
• Help children remember and meet community generated rules and expectations by providing both visual and auditory cues and prompts
• Reinforce the positive actions of children by using descriptive language, emphasizing the positive impact of a child’s actions on others
• Facilitate problem solving
• Create an inclusive environment that values and encourages the participation of children from all cultural and linguistic backgrounds as well as children with special needs

• Set the tone for responsible conduct by creating a high-quality learning environment and thoughtfully scheduled daily routine
• Assign tasks for community care, such as watering plants, feeding program pets, or helping to prepare snacks, to help children practice responsibility
• Discuss the “whys” of fairness and respect
• Teach social skills, such as patience and generosity, by using social stories and role-play experiences
• Intervene and address negative interactions immediately
  Prevent conflicts by limiting program transitions and minimizing waiting time
• Provide children with a calm presence in conflict situations
• Support children’s conflict resolution by
  using descriptive language to help children make sense of conflict
  prompting children with open-ended questions and statements
  facilitating, rather than dictating, the solution process
• Create and refer children to problem-solving kits with visual cues
• Use and discuss books that have storylines around relationships, community, and conflict
• Use “persona dolls” or puppets and social stories to promote skill development and perspective taking^[4]

Supporting Sense of Time (History)

One of our unique human characteristics is the ability to think of ourselves in relation to past events and to anticipate the future. The ability to see oneself in time enables us to derive lessons from past experiences, understand how we are affected by historical events, and plan for the immediate future (such as preparing a meal) or the long-term (such as obtaining an education). The ability to see oneself in time is also the basis for perceiving one’s own growth and development, and the expectation of future changes in one’s life.

The preschool years are a period of major advances in young children’s understanding of past, present, and future events and how they are interconnected. Yet their ability to understand these interconnections is limited and fragile. Young preschoolers have a strong interest in past events but perceive them as ‟islands in time” that are not well connected to other past events. As they learn more about events of the past, and with the help of adults, children develop a mental timeline in which these events can be placed and related to each other. This is a process that begins during the preschool years and will continue throughout childhood and adolescence.

A thoughtfully designed early childhood program includes many activities that help young children develop a sense of the past and future. The activities may include conversations about a child’s memorable experiences, discussions of a group activity that occurred yesterday, stories about historical events, circle-time activities in anticipation of a field trip tomorrow, and picture boards with the daily schedule in which special events can be distinguished from what normally happens. In these and other ways, teachers help young children construct their own mental timelines.

1.0 Understanding Past Events

2.0 Anticipating and Planning Future Events

3.0 Personal History

4.0 Historical Changes in People and the World

Teachers can support children’s development of the history foundations with the following:

• Use predictable routines to facilitate children’s sense of time
• Incorporate time words into conversation, such as before, after, yesterday, first, next, and later
• Create opportunities to talk with children about meaningful experiences and build connections between current and past events and to anticipate future events
• Extend and expand on children’s narrative descriptions with language relating to time
• Share your memories of the children’s abilities over time
• Ask questions to increase children’s recollections of events
• Document and display children’s work at their eye level to encourage recall and reflection
• Sing songs, recite poetry, and read books that involve sequencing
• Promote planning as children engage in child-initiated projects
• Acknowledge birthdays, with sensitivity to family preferences
• Provide activities that invite personal reflection
• Make use of children’s stories that explore growth and individual change
• Utilize familiar resources, such as parents, grandparents, family members, close friends and community members, to share their own childhood experiences
• Read children’s stories about different places and times to expand children’s perspective
• Expose children to the arts
• Observe changes in animals, plants, and the outdoors
• Record significant events on a large calendar to create a program history
• Provide children with hands-on experiences with concrete artifacts and historical objects (e.g., toys, utensils, tools)^[6]

Supporting Sense of Place (Geography and Ecology)

Each person has a sense of the places to which they belong: home, workplace, school, and other locations that are familiar and meaningful. Young children experience this sense of place strongly because familiar locations are associated with important people who constitute the child’s environment of relationships. Locations are important because of the people with whom they are associated: home with family members, preschool with teachers and peers. Preschoolers also experience a sense of place because of the sensory experiences associated with each location: the familiar smells, sounds, and sometimes temperatures and tastes combine with familiar scenes to create for young children a sense of belonging.

Developing a sense of place also derives from how young children interact with aspects of that physical location. Preschool children relate with their environments as they work with materials; rearrange tables, chairs, and other furniture; create maps to familiar locations; travel regularly from one setting to another; and work in other ways with their environments. Young children also interact with their environments as they learn to care for them. Young children’s natural interest in living things engages their interest in caring for plants and animals, concern for the effects of pollution and litter on the natural environment, and later, taking an active role in putting away trash and recycling used items.

These interests present many opportunities to the early childhood educator. Young children can be engaged in activities that encourage their understanding of the environments in which they live, whether they involve creating drawings and maps of familiar locations, talking about how to care for the natural world, discussing the different environments in which people live worldwide, or taking a trip to a marshland or a farm.

1.0 Navigating Familiar Locations

2.0 Caring for the Natural World

3.0 Understanding the Physical World Through Drawings and Maps

Teachers can support children’s development of the geography and ecology foundations with the following:

• Supply open-ended materials in the indoor and outdoor early learning environment to promote exploration of spatial relationships
• Set aside time for outdoor explorations each day
• Provide children with sensory experiences, especially those with sand and water
• Describe your own actions as you travel between locations
• Play games about how to get from here to there
• Engage children in conversation about how they travel to and from preschool each day
• Take walks through familiar locations and neighboring areas
• Talk about the here and now as well as encouraging later reflection
• Locate and explore local landmarks
• Promote children’s understanding of weather and its impact on their day-to-day experiences
• Comment on weather patterns and invite children to share their observations
• Read aloud books and engage children in storytelling related to
• navigating familiar locations and daily routines
• investigating the earth and its attributes
• Integrate living things into the indoor learning environment
• Observe life in its natural setting
• Compare and contrast living and nonliving things
• Model respect and care for the natural world
• Use descriptive language to talk about the earth and its features
• Teach young children easy ways to conserve the earth’s resources
• Grow a garden in the program’s outdoor space
• Eat fresh produce at snack time and obtain food directly from a local gardener, farmers market, or food vendor when possible
• Engage children in conversations about maps, provide map-making materials, incorporate maps into dramatic play, use maps when planning outings, and make a mpa of the classroom/building and outdoor space
• Supply the learning environment with a variety of blocks and other open-ended materials to support the symbolic representation of the world the children see and experience each day
• Play board games that use trails and pathways
• View locations from different physical perspectives
• Prepare a treasure hunt^[8]

Supporting Marketplace (Economics)

Young children’s interest in adult roles and occupations extends to the economy. Preschoolers know that adults have jobs, and they observe that money is used to purchase items and services, but the connections between work, money, and purchasing are unclear to them. This does not stop them, however, from enacting these processes in their pretend play and showing great interest in the economic transactions they observe (such as a trip to the bank with a parent).

Moreover, young children are also active as consumers, seeking to persuade their families to purchase toys or access to activities that they desire, sometimes hearing adult concerns about cost or affordability in response. On occasion, they also learn about economic differences between people and families, such as when a parent is unemployed or when families are living in poverty. All of these activities convince them that the economy, while abstract to them, is important.

A carefully designed early childhood education setting provides many opportunities for young children to explore these ideas through play, conversation, and the creation of economic items to buy, sell, or exchange.

1.0 Exchange

Teachers can support children’s development of the economics foundations with the following:

• Introduce economic concepts (e.g., production, exchange, consumption) through children’s books
• Provide open-ended materials to support children’s spontaneous investigations of business and the economy
• Offer dramatic play experiences that allow children to explore economic concepts
• Explore alongside children, expanding on their initiative
• Draw attention to trends of consumption in the preschool setting
• Discuss wants and needs with children and allow children to help make economic decisions
• Explore all forms of exchange
• Visit local businesses
• Create an opportunity for children to make and sell their own product; discuss how the money made will be spent^[10]

Engaging Families

Teachers can make the following suggestions to families to facilitate their support of history and social science

• Encourage families to tell stories and sing songs to their child about their home culture
• Remind families that they are the child’s most influential models.
• Support families to help their child develop strong, warm relationships with adults and children among their family and friends.
• Suggest ways that family members can talk with their child about the daily work they do.
• Suggest that adults find household projects to work on with their child.
• Remind adults to notice and recognize times when their child is being cooperative and responsible.
• Encourage adults to talk with their child about respect and fairness.
• Work with adult family members as they establish some simple, age-appropriate rules to be followed at home and help children understand that there is a reason for each rule.
• Share ways to establish some dependable family rituals and routines.
• Remind families to discuss family plans and events with children before they occur.
• Share with family adults the importance of recounting past shared events with their children. Suggest that they use storytelling to help children remember the sequence and details of both everyday and special experiences.
• Suggest that families find a special place for items that document children’s growth.
• Encourage adult family members to tell children stories about their family’s history.
• Suggest that they look for maps in places where their family goes.
• Suggest taking different routes when going to familiar places.
• Encourage families to talk about nature (i.e., weather, seasons, plants, animals, and so on) with their child.
• Encourage families to have conversations about ways they can help the earth (reduce waste, conserve natural resources, compost, etc.)
• Suggest that adult family members share with their child elements of the natural world they especially enjoy.
• Encourage families to talk with their child about the connection between cost and decisions to buy items and services.
• Assure families that it is fine to have conversations about “wants” and “needs.”
• Suggest that families show their child some alternative ways to acquire things the family needs or wants, as well as ways to help meet the needs of others.
• Encourage families to begin to share with preschool children their own values about money.
• Prepare yourselves, as early care and education professionals, to play an active role in supporting families facing personal economic crises. Educate yourselves about available community services and, when possible, help families to obtain access to them.^[12]