Child Centered Curriculum: Howards Gardner

A child-centered curriculum is a curriculum that is tailored to the students and their needs. Early childhood education programs should follow this type of system because children at that age should be exploring the world around them with all of their senses. Having this type of curriculum would mean that the lesson is focused on what the student is learning and taking in. Research is always changing when it comes to the mind, so it makes sense that school curriculum would change every so often. Unfortunately there are people that don’t like change and say “This is how I did it in school and I turned out just fine” (p.159). I hear people say this all the time and have even said it myself when it comes to the Common Core math standards. I think …show more content…
Gardner believed schools only focus on verbal/linguistic and logical/mathematical intelligences (p.161). I agree with this because American schools basically test math, science, and language skills on state tests such as the MAP test. It would be a completely different experience if mandated tests also collected scores in the fine arts categories, besides literature. I have taken Gardner’s multiple intelligences test in several of my college classes. These are always for fun and the teacher never really takes the scores down, so they are not using our scores for their teaching methods. I guess the scores wouldn’t be important if you taught to include every intelligence in your curriculum. An example from the book of a teacher doing this is of Robin, who is working on her practicum. She uses a Native American theme to teach using the Multiple Intelligences Theory. For verbal intelligence a storyteller goes into the classroom, for musical intelligence they dance to a tape of Native American music, and for visual intelligence the class observes three blankets made by Navajo tribe members and compares the colors and patterns (p.162). I did a lesson plan like this in one of my education classes except I only had to connect two of the intelligences while my classmates made connections with other sets of two. I enjoyed this exercise and it was interesting to see …show more content…
The first type of learning is knowledge. This is the information children take in through their senses. The second type of learning is skills, which are abilities that build on previous knowledge and experiences. The third type of learning is dispositions which is, an orientation to the world that was learned from role models. The final type of learning is feelings. These are the emotions that happen and are remembered during a learning experience (p.164). These four types of learning can be taught through the arts. Knowledge can be taught through sensory experiences. I use a sensory bin in my classroom that we put together by theme. For our Halloween bin we used: black beans, orange lentils, Halloween cookie cutters, fake leaves, small foam pumpkins, a small bucket, a spoon, plastic tweezers, noodles and black rocks. The kids really love this center and learn how to manipulate small objects. Skills in the arts are developed through experimenting with art materials (p.165). We do this in our free art when the kids have access to almost all the art supplies. However it is hard to be able to let the kids experiment with certain materials. Some materials are very expensive such as oil paints or pastels and charcoal. I would love to be able to give my kids these things, but I can barely keep up with buying the regular supplies. A good way to get around spending money on supplies is to ask