Methods I Benchmark- Fall 2022 Portfolio

Infants/ Toddlers

Awesome B-5 Student

Child Development and Learning Standards Cluster

Portfolio Artifact Rationale: NAEYC Standard: 1 & CEC Standard: 1

Name of Artifact: OMPA #3 Cognitive

Date: 10/16/2022

Course: BRFV 4380 Methods for Infants and Toddlers (Practicum)

Rationale:

NAEYC Standard 1 describes a teacher candidate as being able to understand the
entirety of a child, their needs, and “of multiple interacting influences on children’s development
and learning”. This assignment demonstrates this standard because it gives children the
opportunity to have multiple sensory experiences while making mud. Playing with mud helps
with a child’s development because the activity can involve using 4 of the 5 senses: touch, hear,
see, and smell, which creates a deeper exploration of nature while they develop their cognitive
skills. The activity also gave them the opportunity to explore things in their environment safely
and under close supervision. Throughout the activity, I spoke to the children and repeated
specific words (i.e., soil, water, mix, mud, squishy, smell, listen, and touch) to help build their
vocabulary while they explored the sensory table. This also helped them build their
communication skills and create a connection between words and action while we played in the
mud. Communicating and getting directly involved in the activity helped me to establish a
relationship with the students and helped the children foster relationships with one another as
they participated in parallel play. The children also developed their motor skills through this
experience when they collected dirt and mixed it with the water to make mud. In the future, I
can put large rocks and fake insects to link the activity with real world experiences.

CEC Standard 1 explains that a teacher candidate must have respect for the students and
recognize that each of them are unique individuals. It also states that we must understand that
children with exceptional learning needs have varying abilities that may impact their
development, learning style, or the way they experience certain activities. By providing different
sized spoons, cups, bowls, and different sand toys, I ensured that the children would have a
variety of tool options to manipulate while playing with the mud. For the children who are still
working on their fine motor skills, I gave them a bowl and a larger spoon so that they would have
a firmer grasp instead of allowing them to use smaller tools that would require more dexterity,
such as small spoon, allowing each child to participate at their current developmental stage. The

tools continued to give the children the opportunity to work on their fine motor and cognitive
skills during the activity while they poured, scooped, and squished the mud into different
containers. Understanding that some children in the class may not enjoy the sensation of mixing
soil and water or enjoy playing in mud because of the texture, I provided them with sticks and
mixing spoons so that they would not have to touch the mud. This demonstrates my sensitivity
to their preferences and unique behaviors to different or foreign textures.

It is imperative that the teacher is flexible and is capable to adapt to the way each of her
students learn. This activity gave allowance for me to make modifications so that a child with
ELN could experience the same activity, but in a way that will not offend them. Moreover, by
providing different sized tools in this activity, I offered the opportunity for the children to
challenge themselves when manipulating the objects. For example, they could try using a small
spoon to scoop mud into a cup, or they can use a bowl to pour water into the sensory table. Each
of those scenarios could be challenging for a child depending on their fine motor strength. In the
future, when working with children with exceptional learning needs, I could make modifications
to the activity to differentiate my lesson based on the student’s needs. For example, instead of
using dirt and water to demonstrate what happens when you mix two different substances, I
could give the child water and soap to mix together to create bubbles or soapy water. I could
also create an emergent-based lesson plan to focus on the interests of the students. Since at this
age they cannot speak, I could connect with their parents and ask them about the children’s
favorite activities, characters, and experiences so that I can incorporate them into our class
experiences and lessons. This allows me to connect and understand each child’s individualism
and gives me the opportunity to work with parents to help create meaningful learning activities.
In addition, communicating with parents throughout the school year can help me learn about
each family’s culture and familial backgrounds to determine what activities and experiences are
acceptable and appropriate for each child and to not offend their beliefs and lifestyles.

Artifact:

OMPA
October 16, 2022

• Objectives (O) – Cite the actual state learning standards. (i.e. GELDS:
http://gelds.decal.ga.gov/Search.aspx )

o CD-SC2.1b Engages in structured play with sand, soil and mud activities.
o CD-SC4.1d Plays with and explores different toys and objects.
o APL1.1a Uses available senses to learn and explore their environment.
o APL2.1b Begins to show curiosity/interest in new objects, experiences, and

people.
o CLL1.1b Listens to and follows simple directions.
o CLL2.1a Demonstrates understanding of simple words through his/her actions.

• Materials (M) – List necessary materials you’ll need to accomplish the activities. Include
book titles, authors, publication dates, where necessary.

o A shallow container or sensory table
o Cups, bowls, sand toys etc.
o One bucket of water
o One bucket of soil

• Procedures (P) – Offer a brief description of the activity you have planned. Consider the

appropriate sequence of these lessons. Remember that you must use your own creativity
here… no worksheets, no printed out lesson plans from the Internet… step outside the box.
Create hands-on, minds-on, interactive, engaging activities. Allow your infants/toddlers
to experience multisensory activities with adult language that facilitates learning; for
older children plan for decision making, questioning, inquiry, etc. Integrate a variety of
teaching resources (e.g., real artifacts, children’s books with literacy props such as
puppets and flannel stories, art materials, music).

o Collect all need materials and place them on the activity table.
o Invite a small group of children, no more than three at a time to participate in the
o Fill a shallow container with a small layer of soil and add water.
o Demonstrate and explain to the children that water and soil create mud.
o Encourage the children to combine the water and soil and mix the contents with

their hands to make mud.
o If the children are sensory sensitive, give them a stick or a spoon to mix the mud.
o Give them cups, bowls and sand toys to explore how they can play with the mud.
o Use descriptive words such as lumpy, squishy, gooey, and messy as they use their

hands and toys to explore.

• Assessment (A) – Include a variety of appropriate assessment tools (e.g., checklists,
observational notes, portfolios, dictation of children’s ideas). Make sure they tie back to
the standards.

o I will create a checklist to mark down who was able to follow the directions to
make the mud and who was willing to put their hands into the concoction.

o I will also take notes on how the children used the different toys, cups, and bowls
to play in the mud.

o I will also take note of what the children do if / when they touch the mud (i.e. did
they squeeze the mud in their hands?)