Early childhood education is all about discovery and learning about the world and yourself. Providing multiple learning opportunities to young learners can help them find what they enjoy, which could lead to careers and hobbies later in life. Today’s blog will identify ways to provide students with activities and tools to cover the 16 categories of the National Career Clusters Framework and cover career exploration in almost any field.
Make Sense of Their Everyday Life
When you are young and just starting out life in the world, there’s a lot to take in. Some children will make constant use of the word “Why” to learn more about their surroundings. Some children may just take everything for granted that comes with their family and life circumstances. Regardless, you can use everyday life as a learning experience and engage the areas of life that appeal to them.
Think about how you might integrate these topics into your lessons for the day:
Agriculture, Food & Natural Resources: How do we decide what goes on a student’s plate each day?
Human Services: How do the services we have in early childhood and family sectors work?
Transportation, Distribution, and Logistics: How do they get to school each day, and how did those parts, such as roads, travel, etc., get created?
As adults, we can often forget that there’s a lot of the world you don’t see and understand as a child. Learning about those things can help children develop sympathy for the adults they see and don’t see that make their lives better, or grasp what they want to learn more about and delve deeper into topics as they see fit with books, videos, and hands-on activities.
Identify How the World Works with Models and Designing
Whether your students are auditory, visual, or kinesthetic learners, engaging in basic science through modeling and experiments can engage curiosity in several fields. Children will have natural questions about the world around them, such as “Why does it rain?” or “What do animals do?” Though these questions may seem simple, they can directly relate to some of the career clusters.
For talking about the weather, you could engage these fields:
Agriculture, Food & Natural Resources: How does the weather affect the way plants grow and get to our grocery stores? Show a model of what climates need to be like for certain crops to grow and then the pathway to the store.
Hospitality and Tourism: Why does the weather make some places nice to visit for vacation? Make an experiment where you show how hot the sun can make things, then talk about the earth and seasons.
Manufacturing: Why do buildings and other structures get worn down over time? Make an experiment where you leave something outside vs. inside and see the results.
When talking about animals, you could discuss:
Architecture and Construction: See what makes a good bird habitat by observing or making a birdhouse.
Government & Public Administration: Talk about national parks and how setting aside land helps animals have a home, and then have students design their own parks.
Health Science: Look at the 3D model of a unique animal and show how they survive in the wild.
Whenever you look at one of these models or design an experiment, always connect it with how the people who work in those fields study or make it all work together. Make the lessons as concrete and simple as possible so students can easily understand how everything works together and make sense of a seemingly complex world.
Embracing Valuable Skills for the Future
According to the research institute at McCrindle, 2 out of 3 Gen Alpha students will work in jobs that don’t exist today. How do you plan for the future that we won’t even know? That’s why it’s important to give students a taste as to what skills will be important in the future. With the internet, smartphones, and other AI technologies still in their infancy, the more they can grow up in the fields that make this all possible, the more they can be prepared for whatever the world throws at them. Essential skills like coding, math, science, and more are all things that will put them ahead of the game when it comes to the future.
Use technology to your advantage to engage students with creative projects:
Finance: Create simple math projects that help students learn the concepts of buying, budgeting, and fair trade.
Information Technology: Give students coding applications designed for kids to learn the building blocks of how computers work.
STEM: Engage students with a plethora of activity kits to engage with the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math.
The goal with any of these activities is not to make students into accountants or app developers in a week, but to expand their horizons to fields that will be essential to society moving forward. Professionals often cite their excitement in their field of choice from a young age, so engage those curiosities now to get those future professionals excited about what lies ahead for them.
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Obviously, kids will not need to worry about their future careers until much later in life, but encouraging curiosity and learning will be very important skills to develop. That’s why starting with simple activities and lessons will make great strides in engaging with the world around them. Regardless of their eventual career choice, the right learning experiences today will help tomorrow’s children grow up to be the leaders of tomorrow. Our Vendor Partners can offer a variety of experiences to help engage your students in any of the 16 fields of the Clusters Framework.
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Pitsco Education
Pitsco Education is the leading provider of preK-12 STEM solutions. Pitsco’s various products, activities, curricula, and program solutions promote relevant and engaging learning experiences and continued success after graduation. From classroom and district-level programs to individual activities and at-home learning, whether you’re looking for robotics, coding, dragsters, drones, or online testing, Pitsco Education has got you covered.