As an early childhood educator, it is my job to meet children where they are, as it relates to their physical, social, emotional, and intellectual development. And, I fully understand that children learn in many different ways. Howard Gardner composed a theory that provides educators with the knowledge, understanding, and examples needed to teach children in the many different ways they learn. His theory is called Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence Theory. Gardner lists these multiple intelligences as Linguistic, Visual/Spatial, Logical/Mathematical, Musical, Bodily/Kinesthetic, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, and Naturalistic. When designing, implementing, and evaluating experiences that promote positive development and learning for each and every young child using differential instructional strategies and understanding the multiple intelligences is essential. …show more content…
The best way I have found for me to do this is to provide my children with a high-quality environment enriched with many opportunities for free play. It is agreed by many well-known theorists that free play is key to the development of a child’s learning in an early care setting. However, I believe free-play is not just random play, but it is the intentional placement of well thought out book, puzzles, dolls, art materials, instruments, manipulatives, and many more age appropriate items, asking a series of open-ended question and the use of rich vocabulary. In the learning centers of my classroom, I place different items that correspond to the curriculum theme, a child-initiated area of interest, remediation, or enrichment. I also use free play as an opportunity to develop my children’s social, gross motor, fine motor, and problem-solving