Ideas and Innovations In Early Childhood Education

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March Madness Brackets in Preschool/PreK

As we stated last year, learning about charts and graphs should be part of any early education curriculum.

https://www.earlychildhoodeducationandcare.com/bloggers/2018/10/27/charts-and-graphs-should-be-a-daily-part-of-preschoolprek-curriculum?rq=Charts

There is one specific type of chart that you will be seeing a lot of in March and that is a bracket. Hard core college basketball fans and even those with only a passing interest in the sport fill out NCAA Basketball Tournament brackets to either win bragging rights and or money. While we would never bring gambling to ECE, we can bring the concept of brackets to early education as a way to teach children another way to visualize information. To do a March Madness in an ECE class, pick a topic like favorite book or favorite animal and make it into a bracket format. Each day, have the children vote on their favorite for each match and the leading vote getter moves on to next round. This can be a fun long term project to do with the kids that teachers skills like counting, more than/less than, and mathematical literacy. Below are a few of my class brackets over the years.