Importance of Early Childhood education
Early childhood is a
crucial stage of life in terms of a child's physical, intellectual,
emotional and social development. Growth of mental and physical
abilities progress at an astounding rate and a very high proportion of
learning takes place from birth to age six. It is a time when children
particularly need high quality personal care and learning experiences.
Education
begins from the moment the child is brought home from the hospital and
continues on when the child starts to attend playgroups and
kindergartens. The learning capabilities of humans continue for the rest
of their lives but not at the intensity that is demonstrated in the
preschool years. With this in mind, babies and toddlers need positive
early learning experiences to help their intellectual, social and
emotional development and this lays the foundation for later school
success.
First Three Years
During the first three years parents
will be the main influence in the child’s learning experience and
education. What parents do and expose their children to has a vast
impact on the development of the child. Parents sometimes forget that an
interested parent can have a tremendous impact on a child’s education
at any age. If the parents choose to participate in a Mothers and
Toddlers group or child-care arrangements, including family babysitting
or center-based child care, these all have the potential to provide
high-quality, individualized, responsive, and stimulating experiences
that will influence the child’s learning experience. With this in mind, a
child in a negative enjoinment could also result in negative effects as
well. This fact makes it essential that the environment that the child
is placed in during these early years be as positive and intellectually
stimulating as possible. Very strong relationships are imbedded in
everyday routines that familiar caregivers provide. It is the primary
caregiver that a child learns to trust and looks to for security and
care.
Speech development is one of the first tools that a child will
demonstrate in his/her lifelong education. Wordlessly at first, infants
and toddlers begin to recognize familiar objects and to formulate the
laws that systematically govern their properties. With encouragement
through books and interaction, toddlers soon pick up vocabulary.
It
is really useful to understand how language unfolds. The first words
that toddlers learn are normally the names of familiar people and
objects around them. Then they learn words that stand for actions. Only
then do they start to have the words that describe their world, that are
about ideas. This development is usually in the second part of the
second year of life. A parent or caregiver can have a vast impact on a
child’s speech development by the amount of time that is spent talking
with and reading to a child.
Every caregiver can, in culturally
appropriate ways, help infants and toddlers grow in language and
literacy. Caregivers need presence, time, words, print, and intention to
share language and literacy with infants and toddlers. All five
qualities are important but it is intention that can turn a physical act
like putting away toys or lining up at preschool into a delightful
learning experience. Even a trip to the grocery store can be turned into
a vocabulary lesson about colors and the names of fruits.
Importance of play
Child
development experts agree that play is very important in the learning
and emotional development of all children. Play is multi-faceted.
Although it should be a fun experience for the child, often many skills
can be learned through play. Play helps children learn relationship and
social skills, and develop values and ethics, Play should always be
considered an essential part of a child’s early education.
Functional
play helps children to develop motor and practice skills. This kind of
play is normally done with toys or objects that are stackable, can be
filled with water or sand or playing outdoors. Water play or sand play
is a favorite amongst pre-school children and a valuable teaching tool.
This type of play can make up about 50% of the type of play that
toddlers through 3year-old children practice.
Constructive play is
characterized by building or creating something. Toys that encourage
this type of play are simple puzzles, building blocks, easy craft
activities, and puppets. Normally 4 or 5 year old children enjoy this
type of play, but it continues to be enjoyable into the first and second
grades of school.
Hands and fingers are the best first art tools.
Soon they will manage thick paint brushes, wedges of sponge, wax
crayons, and hunky chalks. It is advised to avoid rushing a child into
making something in particular. Letting them do what they want
encourages individuality and decision making. Toddlers also enjoy play
dough because they can get hands and fingers in it for poking, rolling,
and shaping. This type of play develops thinking and reasoning skills,
problem solving, and creativity.
Pretend play allows children to
express themselves and events in their lives. Normally a child will
transform themselves or a play object into someone or something else.
This type of play is popular with children in preschool and kindergarten
and it tends to fade out as they enter primary school. Pretend play
helps children process emotions and events in their lives, practice
social skills, learn values, develop language skills, and develop a rich
imagination. Because of the important skills that are developed through
this type of play, efforts should be made to encourage children to
pretend.
Playing games that have a definite structure or rules do not
become dominant until children start to enter elementary school. Board
games, simple card games, ball games or skipping games that have
specific rules will teach children cooperation, mutual understanding,
and logical thinking.
A playground can be a turned into a learning
experience for a child. Although a playground traditionally has certain
elements, these elements may pose an unsafe surrounding for your child
if the equipment is not properly supervised or built of unsafe
materials. To provide a safe environment that allows gross motor
activity it is important that some considerations of the equipment be
made. The following elements have been found to be unsafe in group care
settings:
Metal slides can cause burns when they are exposed to
direct sunlight. The intense sunlight in a tropical climate heats metal
to very high temperatures.
Enclosed tunnel slides make observation
difficult and can allow one climbing child above the enclosed tunnel to
fall on top of another at the tunnel exit.
Traditional seesaws can result in injuries when one child unexpectedly jumps off.
Spring
mounted, rocking toys with very heavy animal seats can strike a child.
(There are acceptable, lighter weight rocking toy alternatives.)
Swings,
other than tire swings, can easy hit a waiting child and cause injury.
Light weight plastic seat swings pose a much lower chance hurting a
child.
Things to look for in a Preschool Curriculum
It is
important that when considering an early education facility, caregivers
and teacher in the facility have knowledge of the cultural supports for
the language and literacy learning of the children and families they are
serving. They need to have sufficient skills in guiding small groups of
children in order to give full attention to individual young children’s
language and literacy efforts. They need to be able to draw out shy
children while they help very talkative ones begin to listen to others
as well as to speak. Caregivers or teachers need to arrange environments
that are symbol rich and interesting without being overwhelming to
infants and toddlers. Even the simplest exchange becomes a literacy
lesson when it includes the warmth of a relationship coupled with words,
their concepts, and perhaps a graphic symbol.
To be effective, an
early year’s curriculum needs to be carefully structured. In that
structure, there should be three strands: provision for the different
starting points from which children develop their learning, building on
what they can already do; relevant and appropriate content which matches
the different levels of young children's needs; and planned and
purposeful activity which provides opportunities for teaching and
learning both indoors and outdoors.
If your child is between the ages
of three and six and attends a preschool or kindergarten program, the
National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC)
suggests you look for these 10 signs to make sure your child is in a
good classroom.
Children spend most of their time playing and working
with materials or other children. They do not wander aimlessly and they
are not expected to sit quietly for long periods of time.
Children
have access to various activities throughout the day. Look for assorted
building blocks and other construction materials, props for pretend
play, picture books, paints and other art materials, and table toys such
as matching games, pegboards, and puzzles. All the children should not
necessarily all be doing the same activity at the same time.
Teachers
work with individual children, small groups, and the whole group at
different times during the day. They do not spend all their time with
the whole group.
The classroom is decorated with children's original
artwork, their own writing with invented spelling, and stories dictated
by children to teachers.
Children learn numbers and the alphabet in
the context of their everyday experiences. The natural world of plants
and animals and meaningful activities like cooking, taking attendance or
serving snack provide the basis for learning activities.
Children
work on projects and have long periods of time (at least one hour) to
play and explore. Worksheets are used little, if at all.
Children have an opportunity to play outside every day. Outdoor play is never sacrificed for more instructional time.
Teachers read books to children individually or in small groups throughout the day, not just at group story time.
Curriculum
is adapted for those who are ahead as well as those who need additional
help. Teachers recognize that children's different backgrounds and
experiences mean that they do not learn the same things at the same time
in the same way.
Children and their parents look forward to school.
Parents feel secure about sending their child to the program. Children
are happy to attend; they do not cry regularly or complain of feeling
sick.
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