The importance of learning by stations in Early Childhood Education
By Miriam Torrecilla
At El Valle School, Alicante we work with experiences in our Infant Education classrooms. Every month, the teachers in the Infant School provide a different experience and work on it in different stations in the classroom. In these spaces the students carry out, playful activities, investigations and interact with each other, which helps the children to develop their intelligence and creativity. In these workspaces, the students are the protagonists in these lessons.
The children work on these experiences according to goals in each of the five corners that make up the classroom which are:
- An experience corner: this is the most important corner, where they work on murals that correspond to the educational unit they are learning at that specific time.
- A logical-mathematical corner: here they work on concepts, geometric forms, quantities, numbers, shapes, sizes…
- A reading and writing corner: where we work on graphomotor skills and oral expression.
- An art corner: a motivating space where students are stimulated to develop their creativity and imagination.
- An English corner: a project that teaches English using recreational methods.
In these spaces we carry out learning activities that allow us to give an adapted response to the differences in the students' interests and pace.
The benefits of working with experiences
Through learning by stations, students are encouraged to share knowledge with their classmates, strengthen their sense of responsibility, and increase their need and desire to learn. It also promotes self-esteem, self-confidence and stimulates logical reasoning and drawing conclusions from experimentation.
In addition to enjoying playful and meaningful learning, students develop observation, hands-on and research skills. Working with experiences helps to appreciate progress and to accept mistakes, and finally, to use speech as a means of communication.
The role of educator at El Valle Nursery School, Alicante is to ensure that students grow and develop in an environment where they learn to create, explore, share and investigate.
