Handbook. Early Childhood Development. Education Essay

Early Childhood Development
Name
Institution
An individual future is greatly influenced with the kind of upbringing one gets. Growing up poor or rich may determine you future life, growing up in abusive or loving family will also influence your future life, these and other factors have influence in later days of an individual. However, the early child development program that was implemented for guiding and aiding in child’s development has a way and provides a more researched practical method to raise and mold an individual from a tender age so that one can grow and develop effectively. What one learns at early stages is vital for the individual and the society large, the more effective the child becomes the more the society benefits and hence it is a key factor to consider while raising an individual. To have an effective early childcare program there must be an effective team that is taking care of the children needs and wants. These care providers need special training, guides and the will to do the same. The guide given helps to create a conducive environment for the children and the teachers so that learning and development can take place, as it ought to in general.
A childcare program is normally custom made for various regions and settings; this is so because some programs in one region may not work in another region. Custom making the childcare program means that children in that area will get the learning they deserve and the environment will allow development to take its course. Programs for urban setting may differ from those of rural areas; age bracket may also force the programs to differ to ensure that all needs are taken care of by the set guides. For example, for children in New York City has a group child care that serves children 6 years and below. Article 47 and other sections of the New York City Health Department regulate the program. As children in urban centers are surrounded by new technology, there is need to incorporate the same today.
Learning experiences
Part II
Nutrition theme
Activity: Fruit and Vegetable cards
Sarah Punkoney
Montessori
Objective: This is a great activity to promote healthy eating of fruits and vegetables.
Supplies: fruits and vegetables handouts cards, downloaded food graph
Procedure: Have the children sorts the cards by color placing them on the floor in every vegetable and fruit color. Then handout cards one by one until all the pictures are sorted. Thus, this activity does not only introduce the children to the different kinds of vegetables and fruits available but also promote healthy eating as the child will be motivated to eat what she picks up at a school lesson. After sorting the cards, the same exact materials are used to graph a picture color, which helps them identify that we eat more foods of the one color than the others do and that is green.
Assessment: the teacher is able to instill the benefits of eating greens through this activity.
Activity: food group sort book
Cc: Sarah Punkoney
This activity for preschoolers to think about what they love eating most and the feeling they get eating. It involves cutting two sheets of construction paper into half lengthwise. The folding the sheets into half and make a booklet by stapling. Second step is to color the food pictures and then cutting them apart. Lastly glue them into the booklet.
Activity: making Hummus and Pitas
Objective: This activity incorporate children from other cultures as urban school have diverse cultures among them. This makes sure that children see that there are other foods that what we typically eat.
Materials
* Fresh vegetables
* Food processor
* Bowl
* Spatula
* Pocket pitas
* Potato masher
Assessment: allows the caregiver to show student there is more different kind of foods than the typical ones they are used too. That is because of the different cultures.
Safety theme
Fishbowl
Objective: enhance problem solving and risk taking skills
Supplies: paper and pencil, newspaper, safety manuals.
Procedure: This activity involves four to eight children, who sits at the front of the class and discuss a given topic in a way that the entire class hears. The group of students will be inside the fishbowl and the other children forms a circle around them. There are given a topic or an open-ended question to discus. Topics may be from the newspaper or the surrounding. Getting the consensus means the group time has run out and then the next group goes in the circle and performs an open-air discussion. At the end of the exercise both groups gives feedback to each other discussion.
Assessment: This exercise helps fosters the child’s problem solving, risk taking, creativity, and curiosity element.
Activity: Guess who?
Objectives: to familiarize children with the various safety equipment’s and people behind them.
Supplies: fire extinguisher, police uniform, doctor’s dustcoat, fire fighters cap, dummy gun, and pictures of the various career people in the safety department.
Procedure: This activity does not involve moving out of class, the caregiver encourage the children to play a matching game where they match tools to the workers. In most cases, safety workers have unique tools and uniform. For example, a child may be presented with a fire fighter cap and then asked to match with the worker.
Assessment: the care giver will be in a position to know if the child are aware of any safety measures or they can avoid going to where there is threat, let us say if they see fire fighters surrounding a particular sit they are supposed to avert the danger.
Physical activity theme
Activity: Take 10
Developed by: ILSI Research Foundation.
Objective: increase physical activity and prevent cardiovascular conditions.
Supplies: none is needed for this activity.
Procedure: This activity combines academic instruction with about ten minutes of physical activity beaks in between for children to move physically without wasting their academic time. It is developed to engage the student and ensuring they are fit.
Assessments: the teacher can easily un earth a medical problem if a student runs short of breath than the rest from the same small activity.
Activity: Jumping Jacks & Bouncy chairs
K-12 Teachers Alliance
Objective: to increase physical activity during learning hours.
Supplies: normal classroom settings, bouncy chairs
Procedure: It is a simple physical activity that can be easily performed in class by any age group. The teacher reviews the concepts with the students standing next to their desks. When the teacher asks a question or the child has a question on the related taught topic, the child will jump to notify the teacher of the query or answer. The activity should have points awarded to encourage the students. This exercise can also involve exercise balls replacing the child chair and have them rotate around the class all day.
Assessment: it allows the teacher to see the ability of the student multitasking ability as healthy living is maintained.
Health theme
Activity: Sweat it out
Objective: The goal of this activity is to have the children get their hearts pumping.
Supplies: yoga mats, carpets
Procedure: One start by talking to the students and advising them on cardiorespiratory health benefits, one can tell them how it is of vital importance to archive without losing breath. Next step is to have children assume the mountain climber position. That is upright pushup position, bending one leg to their chest while extending the other one. Then have them quickly switch legs and repeat until it is enough exercises for the children.
Assessments : it allows the teacher to know the students who need more physical activities and sees their listening ability.
Activity: relaxation
Objective: A simple activity such as breathing in and out can make a child learn how to deal with pressure. This is a vital feature of dealing with worries and keeping the body fit. Stress causes havoc and it only crucial if one knows how to relax.
Supplies: N/A
Procedure: Instruct the children to lay down on the floor with their eyes closed. Instruct them to fill their lungs with air and then let out the same but do it slowly as if they are letting out the negative issues they have together with the air. This can be done through counts of seven for breathing in and count of seven for breathing out. This should be done when their hands are on the abdomen to feel the movement.
Part III
Early childhood program policies and practices
Safety policies are statements develop about behavior that will be considered acceptable if performed as it is in relation to the child welfare, concerned group surrounding the child as well as the shared property. Traditionally child policies and guidelines only advised children on what not to do or on what they are not supposed to be doing. They left out what behaviors are acceptable or considered to be valued. When guidelines are developed based on developmentally on appropriate expectations they can effectively aid in promoting children cooperative safe use play and play equipment.
Child care providers should encourage the child appropriate behavior by positively stating the safety guidelines for example, when basing safety of the slide game, they should use terms such as slide down feet first with you bottom so that you can see where you sliding to, this should be done to avoid words such as don’t , do not or not as they should be used when the child is in danger. Giving the child a brie description of the guideline makes the child more likely to comply.
When it comes to children there should be no universal policies, one should be able to come up with own policies or guidelines based on the following;
* The number of children in the facility
* The available number of adults who are going to supervise
* Nature and type of activities to be performed.
* Type of equipment, program and space available both outdoor and indoors.
Very young children may need special attention as their behavior is more difficult to maintain and hence the program may require a limited establishment which detailed and explicit. The type of toys, equipment, or tools used will also determine how the guidelines will be developed. The main aim of the principles is to ensure children are not injured or hurt. In order to gain compliance of the laid guidelines a teacher should never threaten a child but the child should be made aware that she/he has done wrong. An example of guideline for children and parent when it comes to play equipment such as climbing and swings.
For children
* Keep hands to self
* Always hold on with both hands
* Take due care if the equipment is wet from dew, rain, or snow.
For Guardians
* They should inspect the playing equipment before handling them to the child. Always check I the equipment was broken and probably has sharp edges from the last playtime.
* Limit the number of children using the equipment at a time, let the number be a safe number.
* There should be an adult around the playing children all the time.
* Proper supervision and training of the children especially on use of safety gear and clothes.
For swings
Children should wait until the swing comes to a full stop
Adults should push children
They should always hold on with both hands
They should not share swings; there should be a one-child one-swing policy.
They should not assume any other position besides the sitting position.
Adults;
Should ensure children have a specific designated area where they wait for their turn to swing.
Adults should check for the safety of the swing, look for worn out swings or anything that might harm the child.
In the process of playing the child care provider should recognize the child effort by praising in case of a good achievement. For example an adult might encourage a child to learn and play more just by simple statement like ‘hey I like the way you carefully held the swing all through you turn’’. In general children will not take care of the playing equipment and in most cases they will not follow instructions and hence teachers are encoura...