I run a preschool and I'm struggling with how much to 'help' them in terms of curriculum. I have mostly 3's (mostly young-mid 3's). I've struggled with this in a lot of scenarios, but here's one that happened today:

The children have been interested in cars, so we're doing a study about cars. Specifically, today we were examining wheels and tread. I had some old recycled movie reels that I put a stick through (before they arrived) and we were spinning and wheeling those around.

One of the children was disappointed because he said it didn't really work (meaning that it didn't stay up). Then I had the idea that we should put two wheels on a stick and it would stay up more like how an axel works. So, I spent some time making that. They liked playing with that. But then I got the idea that we could make two axels and make a whole car out of it. But, again, it was my idea and they were too young to execute. I ended up making it, but I know I am doing too much...lol. However, I think just putting these materials out would have been too little. I want to get to the point where we are learning about something, they have an idea or see a problem and try to resolve it, but I just kept doing it for them...lol.

Reflecting, I think I should have slowed down and when the child said, it isn't working, I should have asked him some questions about how we could make it work better and then go from his solutions? Should I offer up solutions of my own?

What would you have done? Does anyone else struggle with this? How do you do child-led, while still trying to extend them a little??

if this scenario had happened during free play, I would have been more relaxed about it, but it was during a small-group activity, so I guess I felt like I wanted it to go somewhere...sigh.

Thanks for getting through that, any thoughts??

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