Engaging Children's Minds: The Project Approach

This popular book describes a project approach that provides a context in which all aspects of children's minds can be engaged, challenged, and enriched. It provides an introduction to the principles of the project approach and presents examples that readers can use to trigger the imagination in light of their own teaching preferences and contexts. Drawing on examples from their own experiences with teachers and young children around the world, the authors offer guidelines for employing the project approach under a variety of local and regional conditions and show how children's intellectual development can be enhanced by engaging in project work. Subsequent chapters indicate the complementary nature of informal project work and formal systematic instruction in the total education of young children; provides a detailed review of research on young children's development relevant to principles of practice in early childhood education; and offers a rich store of examples to help teachers in their efforts to try this approach out for themselves.