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Including Videos in Early Childhood Lessons

believed that I should avoid incorporating videos into my lessons for young children; I thought all lesson activities should involve blocks, puzzles, crayons, PlayDoh, numerous toys, or books. Recently, however, education researchers1 have begun rethinking the use of technology in early childhood education and are learning that resourceful teachers have found ways to successfully include technology in their classrooms.2 While I had no doubt that proponents of technology use with young children had some good points to make, I personally had preferred to stick to physical resources. Then, an experience with one child led me to reconsider my position. My new student was a 3-yearold boy with ADHD. After several sessions together, I brought some toy dinosaurs in for an educational activity. As I put the first dinosaur on the table we usually used for sessions, the little boy announced, “A stegosaurus.” I took another dinosaur out of my bag, and he exclaimed, “That’s a tyrannosaurus rex!” (The boy’s father explained that the T. rex is his son’s favorite dinosaur.) I then showed the child a toy dinosaur that was similar to the T. rex but with a smaller head. Not missing a beat, the boy identified it: “That’s a velociraptor.” I was amazed that a 3-year-old boy could remember and pronounce (perhaps not very clearly, but nonetheless accurately) the names of various types of dinosaurs. I turned to the boy’s dad and asked him how had he managed to teach his sons all these complex words. The boy’s father said that he hadn’t taught him the dinosaurs’ names; the child had learned them while watching the PBS program The Dinosaur Train. I might not have thought too much more about the boy’s remarkable dinosaur knowledge, if it were not for the COVID-19 pandemic. When the quarantine began and the New York Including Videos in Early Childhood Lessons TEACHING TIPS