1. An appropriate early childhood curriculum is based on the theory, research, and experience of knowing how young children develop and learn. In the video the teachers demonstrate how they use their knowledge of their students to help them prepare the environment and curriculum. Think about your own classroom and students. How will you use the information from the video in your own work with students?
2. You are planning the activities for the next week in your early childhood classroom. What considerations will you make as you plan for both small and large group activities and center time activities? Include in your discussion both adult- and child-directed activities.
[ Music ]
>> I believe that development of the appropriate practice is a concept that focuses on two aspects of a child’s development, age appropriateness, and individual appropriateness. Research shows that that there are predictable changes in the child’s development, which occur in the physical, social, emotional and cognitive areas. Now knowledge of these changes, helps a teacher provide or prepare for a child because a child needs to grow at his own pace and learn at his own pace. And because children do not grow at the same pace, their individual needs have to be considered when instructing them. And therefore, a teacher who is knowledgeable of those changes, is able to prepare the environment and her curriculum to meet every individual child’s needs.
>> He seems to need language.
>> Yes. [Inaudible] a little bit. But he needs more language.
>> My team will do the curriculum once a month but then we meet every two weeks to put more, to put more activity, we plan in our curriculum, we leave it there for two weeks.
>> And so now, what type of activities are you going to do to enhance his language?
>> You know, when we do say, say for example, when we do Lego’s you can talk to him by the piece color, shape.
>> Yea.
>> Square.
>> Yea.
>> Triangle, stuff like that.
>> The classroom that offers quality care would have various learning centers, where the child can make choices of what he wants to play with or where he wants to play. For example, there may be a science area, a library, a dramatic play area, a gross motor play area. The child makes choices. Depends on how the child feels. If the child just wants to be just quiet and be by himself, he may want to go to the library. If the teacher had been, you know, talking about traveling, the child may want to build a train track. So he would go to the block area. Now, in these areas, you would find materials again that are developmentally appropriate, so that the child is able to use those materials and feel challenged according to his interest.
>> Great job.
[ Child talking ]
>> Play, I believe, is the child’s work. A child who is at the sensory motor stage or the preoperational stage is not yet able to sit at a desk and take in information. Most of the child’s learning is done through play. So a child has to be in an environment or the teacher has to provide an environment that offers that child materials, resources, activities and interaction that the child will be able to access in order to develop at his own pace, his own social, emotional, cognitive development.
>> Play very important because the children, they learn through their play. Sometime when we see a child doesn’t know what to do and we try to direct the child.
>> You all done? Can we read it again?
>> It is important to plan for both large and small group activities.
[ Singing ]
>> Not every child can function in a large group. And in a large group, the teacher is able to instruct the children and guide them so that they can develop, especially social skills. So they can, so children can learn to work together. However, a child who is not able to function in that group, in a large group, will be more disruptive than anything else and therefore, a smaller group has to be created so that that child can feel comfortable and that child can express himself and be able to just be himself. In that situation, the child is really able to take in more.
>> OK [inaudible] what did you want to do? [Inaudible], would you like to paint [inaudible]?
>> Teacher initiated activities, activities prepared by the teacher to meet certain needs, to give certain guidelines or instructions to the children, the teacher who probably is developing a special theme, might have certain activities that she would like everybody to participate in. For example, a child may not know when it is necessary to wash his hands. So that is a teacher-initiated activity. Whereas, a child may be able to initiate her own activity in the classroom where materials are set at the child’s level, where the child can access these activities without the teacher intervening, that child decides what he wants to do at the time. So he’s able to choose the activity, create his own activity, that would be considered child-initiated activity. And I think child initiated activity helps the child to be independent and develop self-concept, positive self-concept.
>> When the child, they like to do something, and they want to go there and get thing out, to, to work with it. This is important because that their own decision. That decision that they make and we, we want to respect them with that so that can be most [inaudible] day for them. When we bring out the activity that we plan for the children, and if the children, they don’t interest in that, we have to be flexible. If the children like to do something else, then they can do something else. [Laughter]
>> Child care is more than babysitting. It’s really developing the whole child. And therefore a teacher, an adult whose working with a child, needs to have that knowledge, needs to have the ability of interacting with that child in a way that will help the child develop in a positive way.
[ Singing ]
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