Author(s)

Leonidas Anastasiou¹, Nick Kostaras¹, Elisabeth Kyritsis¹, Athanasia Kostaras²

¹Department of Education, University of the Aegean, Mytilene, Greece.
²Aristotle University, Mytilene, Greece.

This article presents and justifies a proposal for the priority of two activities in the early childhood curriculum, namely, those of “storytelling” and the “movement of objects”. Given, on the one hand, the growing interest in science activities for very young children, and the notion of “developmental appropriateness” on the other, the concern about early experiences in physical science is both pressing and legitimate. In the light of such concern, the idea that children should simply participate in interesting activities or in activities that in general enrich their experiential background, needs to be reconsidered. Given that the construction of scientific knowledge involves the construction of relationships among concepts and ideas, and presupposes curiosity and affective imagination, science stories with a science content that captures the imagination of the child, and activities involving the movement of objects appear to be more pedagogically appropriate than other activities. Therefore they should be given priority in the curriculum.

Scientific Knowledge, Young Children, Early Childhood Education, Logico-Mathematical Thinking, Narrative Thinking, Movement of Objects, Imagination, Storytelling, Science Stories

Anastasiou, L. , Kostaras, N. , Kyritsis, E. and Kostaras, A. (2015) The Construction of Scientific Knowledge at an Early Age: Two Crucial Factors. Creative Education, 6, 262-272. doi: 10.4236/ce.2015.62025.