How to develop mathematical thinking skills in early childhood education and care through STEAM?
Best practices from Finland
Who Can Attend?
This course will be helpful for those who are at the beginning of their career in the field of early childhood education, who have no or little formal professional training, or those who experience a need to update and support their practices with more knowledge on recent trends in early childhood education.
Course content:
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Introduction to Finnish Early Childhood Education and Care
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Play, Learning, and Evaluation in Finnish Early Childhood Education and Care
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Developing Skills and Competencies
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Activities for Developing Mathematical Thinking
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Activities based on Patterns and Symmetries
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Building Blocks for Building Up Thinking
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Experiencing mathematical concepts through body movement
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Summary
Course provider: Council for Creative Education Finland
Trainer: Kristof Fenyvesi STEAM learning expert
Duration: 8 x 90 minutes
Batch Starting From 15 Jan 2021 (Note: We have a rolling admission for this course. So you can apply for the course during the first 4 weeks. (e.g. If the course starts on 14th Feb 2020 then you can apply for the course till 14th March 2020)).
Sign up here: https://www.ccefinland.org/finnishsteamedu?utm_campaign=fdda1b31-2342-47ac-8f5c-b4e94c0fa8db&utm_source=so&utm_medium=mail
Course Overview
This course is focusing on developing mathematical thinking skills, creativity, and imagination through playful and artistic multidisciplinary activities in early childhood education. Creating equal preconditions for each child’s holistic growth is one of the main goals of the Finnish Early Childhood Education Curriculum. In this holistic perspective, the early development of mathematical thinking is embedded in playful and creative, often artistic processes. Individual and community activities, which are stimulating imagination and opening up self-expression and reflection, are providing motivation for the early age improvement of various mathematical skills.
The phenomenon-based foundations of mathematical thinking are laid down in early childhood education as part of the advancement of the transversal competences in multidisciplinary educational settings. As transversal competencies consist of knowledge, skills, values, attitudes, and will, the basic mathematical concepts, notions, and principles are also to be discovered by the children in various matters and phenomena, and to be addressed on appropriate cognitive levels.
These goals are fully in line with the recent policy development in the European Union, which prioritizes the development of key competences and extends STEM to STE-A-M especially by integrating Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics (STEAM) and suggesting, that “the earlier people acquire STEAM skills, the better their chances of future educational and professional success will be”.