Investigation & Discovery (3 - 5 years)

Learning Guidelines

Massachusetts Guidelines for Preschool Learning Experiences

The Investigation and Discovery workshop has been designed to meet the Massachusetts Early Learning Guidelines for Preschool Learning Experiences. The purpose of these guidelines, developed by the Massachusetts Association for the Education of Young Children for the Department of Early Education and Care (EEC) in 2003, is to provide a comprehensive view of the development of preschool aged children while documenting the experiences that support this development and school readiness. The guidelines are for families as well as early education and care professionals.

For more information about the guidelines, including definitions of terms, visit http://www.mass.gov/edu/birth-grade-12/early-education-and-care/curriculum-and-learning/.

This workshop aligns with the following guidelines:

Learning in English Language Arts

Children will be able to:

• Participate actively in discussions, listen to the ideas of others, and ask and answer relevant questions.
• Communicate personal experiences or interests.
• Listen to and use formal and informal language.
• Use their own words or illustrations to describe their experiences, tell imaginative stories, or communicate information about a topic of interest.
• Generate questions and gather information to answer their questions in various ways.

Learning in Mathematics

Children are able to:

• Explore and describe a wide variety of concrete objects by their attributes.
• Connect many kinds/quantities of concrete objects and actions to numbers.
• Listen to and say the names of numbers in meaningful contexts.
• Use concrete objects to solve simple addition and subtraction problems using comparative language.
• Use positional language and ordinal numbers (first, second, third) in everyday activities.
• Use concrete objects to solve simple addition and subtraction problems using comparative language (more than, fewer than, same number of).
• Explore and describe a wide variety of concrete objects by their attributes.
• Organize and draw conclusions from facts they have collected.
• Record observations and share ideas through simple forms of representation such as drawings.
• Recognize, describe, reproduce, extend, create, and compare repeating patterns of concrete materials.
• Listen to and use comparative words to describe the relationships of objects to one another.

Learning in Science and Technology/Engineering

Children will be able to:

• Ask and seek out answers to questions about objects and events with the assistance of interested adults.
• Explore and describe a wide variety of natural and man-made materials through sensory experiences.
• Make predictions about changes in materials or objects based on past experience.
• Record observations and share ideas through simple forms of representation such as drawings.
• Use their senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste to explore their environment using sensory vocabulary.
• Investigate and describe or demonstrate various ways that objects can move.

Learning in History and Social Science

Children will be able to:

• Identify and describe cause and effect as they relate to personal experiences and age-appropriate stories.
• Observe and identify the needs and characteristics of living things.

Learning in Health Education

Children will be able to:

• Talk about ways to solve or prevent problems and discuss situations that illustrate that actions have consequences.
• Build body awareness, strength, and coordination through locomotion activities.