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    The Ooey Gooey® Handbook: Identifying and Creating Child-Centered Environments
    The Ooey Gooey® Handbook: Identifying and Creating Child-Centered Environments
    The Ooey Gooey® Handbook: Identifying and Creating Child-Centered Environments
    Ebook187 pages54 minutes

    The Ooey Gooey® Handbook: Identifying and Creating Child-Centered Environments

    By Lisa Murphy

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    About this ebook

    With over sixty-five hands-on art, science, and outside play activity ideas for creating engaging environments both at home and in early childhood and school-age care programs, The Ooey Gooey® Handbook is a must-have resource for everyone who spends time with children. For early childhood educators or parents who are just beginning their Ooey Gooey® journey, this is a great starting point. It includes an informational overview of how The Ooey Gooey Lady® started her work and is loaded with activities to get your gooey juices flowing. Each activity includes concept words to explain what children are learning.

    Lisa Murphy has been involved with early childhood education for over twenty years, teaching and working with children in various environments. She presents hundreds of workshops and keynotes at national and international audiences each year on various topics related to early childhood education.

    As the founder and CEO of Ooey Gooey, Inc., Lisa's mission is to assist in the transformation of early childhood education by offering the best workshops and trainings, the most up-to-date materials and resources, and insightful conversations and connections through the power of social media. She is recognized for her ability to link hands-on activities to educational standards, her outspoken advocacy, and her commitment to creating child-centered and play-based early childhood environments.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRedleaf Press
    Release dateMar 16, 2015
    ISBN9781605543802
    The Ooey Gooey® Handbook: Identifying and Creating Child-Centered Environments
    Author

    Lisa Murphy

    Lisa Murphy is a writer and avid blogger. She is a stay-at-home mom and independent sales distributor for Juice Plus+® nutritional products. Lisa resides in Delray Beach, Florida, with her husband, Jim, and their two children. Marilyn Murray Willison is an accomplished author of five nonfiction books and has worked as a respected international journalist in both the US and the UK. As an adoptee, author, and mother, With an Open Heart spoke to her on a variety of levels.

    Read more from Lisa Murphy

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      Book preview

      The Ooey Gooey® Handbook - Lisa Murphy

      INTRODUCTION

      I have dedicated my professional life to creating places where children can simply be. Where they can engage in experiences that are meaningful to them and have long periods of uninterrupted free time. Where teachers are encouraged to facilitate, instead of teach. Where preschool is not boot camp for kindergarten. Where it is believed that preschoolers do not need bite-sized morsels of an elementary school curriculum and where the curiosity and wonder of childhood is free flowing.

      I do what I do because of the nursery school experience I had, and I know in my heart of hearts I was put here to give that back. It is my passion, dream, and goal to develop places where children can be immersed in all the things that symbolize childhood: mud, sand, water, paint, blocks, songs, books, frogs, trucks, forts, tree houses, tires and ropes. I am forever creating places that provide children with the time, space, materials, and support they need to simply be children and I hope this book encourages you to do the same.

      This book was written for everyone who works with children: kindergarten teachers, parents, family child care providers, principals, playgroup captains, administrators, grandparents, teachers’ aides, and preschool teachers. May it assist you as you increase your understanding of what child-centered means, as you plan exciting activities for the children in your care and as you create and promote environments that encourage a love of life-long learning.

      THE JOURNEY BEGINS

      Unofficially, I am a binkie finder, marble painter, cartwheel turner, back patter, song singer, diaper changer, story writer, skinned knee fixer, cold coffee drinker, PBJ eater, problem solver, hand holder, paint cup filler, grass stain fighter, tree climber, block builder, puddle splasher, hokey pokey dancer, and mud pie baker.

      Officially, I am a teacher.

      I became a teacher because of one particular woman. Miss Mary. Miss Mary owned a Nursery School in Livermore, California. And, in the early 1970’s, I was fortunate to have been one of her students. I can remember my days at Mary’s better than I can remember days at junior high and even high school! While I was studying Early Childhood Education in college, there was never any doubt in my mind that I was put here on this earth to give what I got back. My vision of Early Childhood Education meant being able to create places where children could have the same adventure filled mornings I was fortunate enough to have had. Mornings filled with painting, clay, blocks, songs, stories, mud pies, dress up, big shovels and real hammers, bikes, water, lots of outdoor time, and plenty of open-ended experiences within hours of free play.

      Upon graduation from college I quickly learned that the idealism of Mary’s had been replaced by the reality of day care. I showed up for my first day of teaching preschool and was told to have my lesson plans and ditto request form on the director’s desk every Friday by noon. In addition, I was teamed up with a teacher who had a timer to tell the children when to switch activities, thick rows of masking tape line-up lines all over the floor, name tags on the children, a think about it chair, a whistle around her neck, and lesson plans that were laminated from 1975.

      Giving back what I got was not going to be as easy as I thought.

      I wondered both aloud and silently where the easels were, wondered why we only had thirty minutes of outside time when the children were often there for six, eight, eleven hours, and wondered why we had to do dittos. I shared a few of my concerns and thoughts with the other teachers, and was told, Lisa, we have to do curriculum now to get the kids ready for kindergarten! Make sure you send an art project home each day, but be sure not to let them get too dirty— always use the smocks. Make some name tags for the lunch table, and always label your bulletin boards, the parents want to know what they did each day. And, oh, at nap time, never rub backs for more than ten minutes— it throws the lunches off. Be sure to come in from the play yard when your time is up and make sure they don’t have too much ‘center time’— you can’t just let them play all day, face it Lisa, it’s not the 70’s anymore— you better just get with the program.

      And because I lacked the strength and confidence to question what they told me, I did what they told me to

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