Blog 11: Holiday Project Update

1. It is important to consistently work on your senior project, whether it is break or we are in school. What did you do over the break with your senior project?
As I previously mentioned in my December blog post, I mentor at a daycare/school and they were also on break, so I didn't get the opportunity to spend time with the kids. However, my mentor, Ms. Chami and I were talking about coming up with activities to present to the children. So, I scoured the internet, and Pinterest, to find stuff that both benefits the kids and lets them have fun and then I will show what I found to my mentor and we will see what we are going to do with them.

2. What was the most important thing you learned from what you did and why? What was the source of what you learned?
Well my essential question is, "what is the most important skill a child develops in preschool that helps them best excel academically in kindergarten?", so began to think about how a child, or person in general, gains a new skill. I believe we learn something new either by seeing and/or doing. In my opinion, and from what I've seen at my mentorship, a child best learns when they are interacting with something new. So when I was looking up different activities I came across this link which explains what an activity in a Montessori learning curriculum is.
Another thing I learned from my mini activity research, is another solid piece to help me come up with an answer to my EQ, which is that fine motor skills are the most important. I found that information on this link; it also has various activities for a child to do. I read that many children have weak fine motor skills and in effort to improve upon those skills a teacher talks about different things you could teach the child to strengthen those skills.

3. If you were going to do a 10 question interview on questions related to answers for your EQ, who would you talk to and why?
If  I was going to do a 10 question interview on questions related to answers for my EQ, I would most likely talk to my mentor's assistant, Ms. Mary, because she gets to observe the children who are preschoolers/transitional kindergarteners/some kindergarteners for a full school day, five times a week. She knows what a child lacks when they get to the kindergarten level and how to help them and she also gets to help improve the skills of the preschoolers before they get to kindergarten.