On February 20 Eric presented a play station exhibit at the Collaboration for Early Childhood’s 2015 Symposium. This year’s theme was, “Dance of Diversity: Meeting the Unique Needs of Every Child.” Intense interests are one way that young children can be unique.
The play station was entitled, Supporting Young Children’s Extremely Intense Interests: A work in progress…. An extremely intense interest was defined as “a passionate, sometimes bordering on obsessive, fascination with and attraction to a particular category of objects or activities” (after DeLoache, Simcock, & Macari, 2007). The “work in progress” tagline was added because I wanted participants to help me figure out how I can best support parents and other caregivers who want to support their children’s extremely intense interests.
Below there are links to resources mentioned at the Play Station:
- Full text and photos of the play station exhibit.
- References cited on the play station exhibit.
- Books displayed on the play station tables (about geology, children’s collections, and nerds).
- More complete bibliography on children’s extremely intense interests.
- More information about Nature and Science programs at Wonder Works.
- More information about the 2015 ESCONI Gem, Mineral, & Fossil Show (March 21 & 22).
- Photos and information about the crystals we gave out at the Play Station.
- Recipe for brown homemade play dough.
- Finally, here are links to two articles Eric published more than a decade ago in Chicago Parent magazine. One is about the Islands of Expertise that children can develop about their extremely intense interests. (I had a copy of that issue of Chicago Parent on the table.) The other article is about children’s collections; it’s called Aaron’s Treasures.
If I forgot to post anything here, you can either email me at eric@saltthesandbox.org or post a comment, below.
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