GREDC

Our Image of Childhood

The GREDC Blog

Recent Study: Music

Tom Dodd

Music can stimulate children’s natural curiosity and desire to learn as they explore the diversity, sounds, rhythms, and emotions of different music genres and instruments.

Infants play with drums

Music can also help children develop brain responses to music and speech, which are important for language development and communication. Studies indicate that early exposure to music can enhance infants’ capacity to identify patterns in intricate sounds, and that music intervention can have a positive impact on speech development.

Ms. Penny strums a guitar.

A few of the children were curious what noises different materials would make on the big drum. They had recently collected some fall leaves and tested them on the drum.

Other Recent Posts...

Judah constructs his prototype
Tom Dodd

Judah’s Bridge

For several weeks Judah had been adamant that he wanted to design a rope bridge for the playground. He showed us where it should go and discussed materials that should be used. We spoke about how we could promote the idea to everyone else and then decided to build a

Read More »
Tom Dodd

Playground Redesign

These conversations set us off on a school-wide, child-led project to improve our outdoor areas and work out how to make the best use of the space we have. Our students made many requests for items like real life fire trucks, swimming pool, more water play, pirate ship, bridge and

Read More »
Tom Dodd

Gigi’s Garden

The garden contains several raised garden beds and lattice trellises within a safely enclosed space. Children of all ages use the garden to explore, experiment with plants, water, and bugs, and learn about life cycles and nature.

Read More »

Lauren Huyck

Mentor Teacher

B.S in psychology and writing
A.A. in early childhood education
Teaching since 2010

My name is Lauren Huyck and I am the afternoon lead for the Scoperta classroom. I started as a teaching assistant when the center was still part of Aquinas in 2010. When we became the GREDC in 2012, I stayed on. In 2014, I was excited to accept the role of lead teacher.

I have a Bachelors in psychology and writing, and an associates in early childhood education. I am currently working on getting a Masters in psychology with a concentration in child development.

I love seeing the children grow and learn. There are so many developmental milestones that I get to see and experience. I fell in love with the Reggio approach and work to incorporate it in all my experiences with children. It has definitely taught me to treat children as citizens of the world.

I honestly could go on about how much I love the work I do and how passionate I feel about every child having quality care but that would take eons. So I will end with these two quotes:

“To take children seriously is to value them for who they are right now rather than adults-in-the-making.”

Alfie Kohn

If you trust play, you will not have to control your child’s development as much. Play will raise the child in ways you can never imagine.

Vince Gowmon