Professional Development
Kohl Children’s Museum’s professional development program is designed for teachers, caregivers, parents, and other adults who interact with children ages birth through 8. These are offered both on-site and at the Museum.
Each workshop topic is aligned with the Illinois State Learning Standards and NAEYC Early Learning Standards. All involve hands-on exploration and small and whole group discussion.
Continuing education credit is available.
Workshop Topics
- Animal Adaptations & Habitats: Bring the outdoors into your classroom. Hands-on exploration of worms, newts, and animal-related activities for young children.
- Connecting Literature to Real‑Life Experiences: Discover how to use a combination of children’s literature and hands-on activities to teach real world concepts to young children.
- Creating Art with Recyclables: Explore methods to create inexpensive works of art using recyclable materials, and learn how to motivate the three R’s (reduce, reuse, recycle).
- Encouraging Young Artists through Process Art: Discover how Process Art engages children in exploring concepts such as color, shape, line, value, size and composition.
- Everyone’s a Music Maker: Understand how music and movement correlate with enhanced vocabulary and spatial skills later in life.
- Exploring the Properties of Water: Learn about the properties of water though simple hands on experiments that can be replicated in the classroom for young children.
- Introduction to the Project Approach
- The Importance of Play in Children’s Learning: Learn how play is a vital part of a child’s development. Discuss the link between children’s learning and purposeful play and how teachers can create an environment that encourages discovery and exploration for young children.
- Science For Everyone: Discover ways to create a strong framework for science learning through discovery based, hands-on activities.
Reservations
Contact the Kohl Children’s Museum Education Department at (847) 832‑6873 for fees and further information regarding Professional Development Training Topics or to customize one of your own.
