Hello, today we are going to be talking about the foundations for early childhood and for Children's learning and development. We are just going to be talking about three very important topics. The first is Developmentally Appropriate Practice. The second is the Domains For Learning and Development. And we will also be talking about the importance of play, for early childhood. Okay, the first topic Developmentally Appropriate Practice. So Developmentally Appropriate Practice is a guideline, that suggests your curriculum content, and the practices, and the activities that you will be doing, in your classroom. It describes teaching techniques to promote development, and promotes a learning environment considering each child as an individual and responding to their needs for development. And it stresses the role of play and active engagement and hands on activities for learning. So there are some key things we need to think about when we're talking about developmentally appropriate practice, we need to be able to know how children learn and develop. We need to know each child as an individual in our classroom. We need to know their strengths, their needs and their interests. So we can plan accordingly. We also need to know the social and cultural context in which each of the children in our classroom live. Knowledge of How Children Develop and learn. So thinking about our classrooms, does this knowledge and what we are doing in our classroom match what we know about how children develop? So are we using appropriate activities in our classroom? Are we using appropriate materials for the children in our classroom? And it's not just the age, age is important but we also need to know what the children can do, so what developmental level are they at? So some children are a little below, some children are a little above their age level in development. So we need to supply materials for all of those children. Developmentally Appropriate Practices based on science and it's based on research. It's also based on the core principles of child development and it considers the interests of the Children. We need to make sure that the materials that we are providing are of interests of the children, so that they will be able to really perform well and want to do the activities that we are doing. And our activities should be challenging, yet achievable and our outcomes should be thought about ahead of time. So there are some core principles for child development. There are 12 of them that we are going to be touching on, and it is that all areas of development are important. So we're talking about their cognitive, physical, social-emotional and their language development. And their learning and development follow certain sequences. So when you are thinking about milestones, that's what we mean by sequences. It's usually follows a certain order and the milestones are a general indication of when these development might be happening. Development and learning proceed at varying rates, that is really important. So those milestones that I just mentioned there, they should be very flexible, meaning there is a range in there. But if a child doesn't reach one of those milestones within the range that it says, that just means maybe we need to supply more materials and do a little bit more with that child to get them up to that level. Does not necessarily mean it's a red flag every time that a child doesn't reach those milestones at the appropriate time. Development result results for maturity and experiences. The more experiences that we supply to children and the more activities that we do with them, the more able they are to learn. And early experiences have profound effects of development and learning. So we want to provide as many experiences in our classroom for children so that they can reach their full potential, and development moves to greater independence. So obviously if we are teaching children self help skills and social-emotional skills, they will develop greater independence. Children develop best with secure relationships. So this is also research based, we need to make sure that we are forming a bond or relationship with every child and every family in our center, or family based center. Development is influenced by multiple social and cultural backgrounds. All of the children are coming into your classroom with different experiences, with different values, and beliefs for their families and we need to make sure that we understand what those are before we are labeling a child as unable to do something because it might be something that their culture doesn't value or find important. Children learn in a variety of ways. So we need to think about how children learn best. Children learn best through hands on activities, but some children learn through visual, through auditory, through kinesthetic learning. So we need to make sure that we're offering different ways of our lessons and our activities for the different styles of learning in our classroom. Play is important for developing self regulation and promoting language, cognition and social confidence. We will talk a little bit more about play later on in this module, but that is what we should be concentrating on with young children is making the activities and the lessons involved in the play in the classroom. Development and learning advance when children are challenged, we need to supply materials for the children that are challenging, yet not frustrating for them. And children's experiences, shape their motivation and their approaches to learning. If we make the activities and the materials interesting and fun for them, they will more likely learn from them. We need to think about the strength, the needs and the interests of every child in our classroom when we are planning activities and lessons. So we need to think about developmentally, where is each child on that continue on that those milestones. And thinking about the strengths of the child we want to make sure that we have a strength based approach in our classroom, where we definitely know the strengths of all of the children and we build upon them. We also need to know all of the children's areas of need and that is where we need to work a little bit harder with some of the children to make sure that they are reaching those milestones and reaching their full potential. Temperament is something really important we need to consider with young children. Thinking about your classroom, is it too loud for some of the children? Is there too much stimulation? So we need to realize the temperament of each of the children in our classroom, so we can consider that when we're planning activities and we're doing different things. We also need to think about the individual experiences of the children. If we are doing a lesson on farm animals and we are in an area where Children have never seen a cow in in real life, I mean, how can you really explain to them what that cow is? So you need to do a little bit of extra work on that. If you're in a farming community and you're doing farm animals, the Children are, are going to understand more and really get involved maybe more in a farm animal activity and we need to know that each child is unique. They have their own strengths, they have their own abilities, they have their own personality, they have their own temperament, they have their own experiences. Every child comes into your classroom different and unique and that's important and it's special recognize variations of previous knowledge, skill and life experiences. So this is kind of a culmination of everything we talked about that. We need to realize each child is coming from a different place and with different experiences, different cultures, different beliefs and values, different family structures, whatever it is, every child is coming to us with differences that we need to understand. So thinking about the social and cultural context in which Children live, what experiences and opportunities are offered at home and this is something that, you know, we need to learn from the families, whether it's from your intake form, whether it's from just discussions that you're having with the families, what experiences are they coming into your center with and you will not know that without those conversations and family values are very, very important because every family has different things that they find important and we need to take those into consideration when we are talking with families, when we are talking with Children and when we are planning activities. So our learning should be relevant, respectful and meaningful to the child and the family. And that is, we can't determine that without those conversations with the family. So relationships with the families is very important for you. What is the child's opportunity for participation, familiarity and exposure to various experiences. So you know, does the family have transportation so they can take their child to the zoo or do they not? And their child may not get those experiences. So thinking about that family and you know what what that family looks like and maybe areas that we might be able to build upon and we need to respect the values, expectations and behavioral and linguistic culture, linguistic customs. Again, average child and family is coming into us with unique experiences and unique beliefs and individual beliefs and we definitely need to be thinking about those every day. So thinking about developmentally appropriate practice. And ask yourself these questions when you are planning activities or or planning your lessons is what I'm doing, Keeping what I know about child development and how Children learn. Does this practice or activity or lesson take into account each child's strengths and each child's areas of need and does this activity practice lesson demonstrate respect for a child's social and cultural and family values. The next topic we are going to be talking about is the domains of development. There are four domains of development that are usually considered and they are physical, cognitive, social, emotional and language. So physical development. We are talking about large motor or big body movements or gross motor, you might hear any of those words and also small motor skills. So the large motor skills are your whole body skills. So it's throwing about running, skipping, balancing riding a bicycle, anything where you're kind of using whole body new movements where the small motor skills are, you're thinking mostly about your hands. So it's your grasping, grasping ability. Playing with play. Doh is a great activity to strengthen your small motor skills or a child. Small small motor skills holding a pencil holding a paintbrush holding a fork or a spoon are all small motor skills. Next is cognitive development. And when you think about cognitive development you're thinking you know a little bit about the brain. So how a person is thinking or understanding the world around them. Their creativity, their persistence, Their academic skills are cognitive development, Social emotional development are a person's experiences and their expression and management of feelings and emotions. This is a very, very important topic in early childhood. We really need to be working on a child. Social emotional development because if a child cannot work in a group situation if they cannot control their their emotions and get upset easily and get frustrated easily, it it's harder to do some of those other, especially cognitive activities and next are also for social emotional, the ability to establish and maintain relationships with others. So this is working with others, joining, joining a group, working in groups collaboratively, playing in scenarios in a positive way and last his language definitely not least. Language is the ability to understand and communicate with others. So we need to be talking with not to, we need to be talking with young Children often holding those back and forth conversation asking those open ended questions. Thinking about vocabulary, adding vocabulary words to their their language is really important. Reading books. Singing songs, anything that you are expressing yourself with words is really important. These four domains, they do not operate in isolation. A child needs, we need to be working on all of these in our classrooms and with Children because development in one domain or under development in one domain domain can affect all of the others. They're all interconnected and they all work together. So when we are thinking about teaching Children and Children's learning, we need to think about using a whole child approach, which means supporting learning in all four of those domains. When you're thinking about your lessons, think about how each lesson can support development in physical, in cognitive and social emotional and in language, and those are the best lessons, the ones that are going to support all of those learning. Teaching and learning that we must think about. A child's health and safety whenever we are planning activities for for use in a classroom, and teaching must include engaging and challenging activities. We talked about this a little bit. We want to make sure the activities are challenging. So the Children are learning from them but not so challenging. They're getting frustrated and giving up and we also want to make them engaging. We want to make them interesting and fun. So the Children really want to participate. the whole child approach gives Children the foundation to become well rounded individuals a positive participate in school and in society. And if you we concentrate on all four of these domains, they will become well rounded adults and later in life, so that's talking about producing productive members of society. Last part of our foundations that we're going to talk about is the importance of play for Children's learning. Just a little quote from one of my resource books that I refer to opt in play connects us to the world and each other and others with limited, unlimited possibilities. So if we are encouraging play in our classroom, the possibilities for learning are endless. Alright, so why is play important in early childhood? Because Children construct knowledge through hands on play, They learn how to participate in a group. They learn how to role model, they learn how to find they learn about nature when we're outside and we're just letting them play. They're learning as they're playing. I learned how to cooperate with each other. They learn how their body moves and and how they can move their body and they learn a new language by communicating with each other through life. Play is a way to learn about oneself as well as the world around you. Dramatic play is a great area for learning about oneself and the world around you. In dramatic play. Children can pretend they are somebody else, they can take on a new role and they can figure out what that means, and they can also role play things that they have seen that they may be a little confused about and don't understand and by taking on those roles that helps them. Not be so confused. There are multiple ways to engage in open ended materials. Open ended materials are materials where there is no right or wrong way to use them. So thinking about blocks, blocks are a great open ended material because 10 Children could be in the block area and I'll be doing something different with those blocks and none of them is the wrong way to use them, there is no threat of failure, so a game or even a puzzle where there's a right way to do it. Their, their Children might be a little bit more concerned about doing those kinds of activities because of fear of failure. And Children can always view themselves as successful in and using open ended materials because whatever they do is their own, it's their own creation and they, you know, they see that as a completion and success and they also learned to see themselves as capable. It challenges Children's thinking, so, thinking about the black area again, if a child is building a block structure and it keeps falling, they need to think about what do I need to do differently to make this stay, and it might be putting the larger blocks on the bottom, so it's more stable, but Children can figure that out for themselves, the more that they use these open ended materials. So it motivates and engages learning because the outcomes for any of these are endless and and if a child is really interested in this they are going to keep trying to figure out the best way to proceed and they take an active role in their learning environment because they are deciding how they want to use the materials and what way that suits them and they learn based on their interests because Children are going to go to areas in your classroom that have materials that are that they are interested in and that way they will become more engaged and they will learn more. So thinking about skills developed during play. This is really important because I know you know you've probably heard that you know all Children do is play in in this center. They're not really learning anything, they need to learn their A. B. CS, they need to learn to count. And if if you really dive deep into this you will be able to talk to parents and talk to stakeholders about the importance of play and what Children are really learning in each of those four domains as they are playing in the areas and you doing the activities in your classroom. So for physical domain they are learning small and large motor skills, they are learning spatial skills, they're having whole body coordination, figuring out how to move their body hand eye coordination is very important as Children are entering elementary school because they I really need to be able to use those scissors and use those pencils and write legibly and balance is a really important silk for elementary school. Again Children need to be sitting in their chair and their core needs to be strong to be able to sit there for long periods of time. Think about language and literacy. Children are learning vocabulary, they're learning back and forth communication. They're learning how you know, if I'm speaking you wait until I'm I'm done and then you respond to me and then I wait until you're done and then I respond to you. So that's the back and forth communication and they learn how to be active listeners so they can really participate in those conversations for cognitive development. There's so many things Children learn for cognitive development and this is where you know those A. B. CS and those 123 numbers come in but Children need to be able to do all of these skills before they can get to those two academic skills. So they work on problem solving again when I was talking about the black area, trying to figure out how to make their structure. Stand creativity, imagination, curiosity taking on and assigning roles. We talked about the dramatic play area for that. Crafting the environment and deciding when to change it what you know And again that's another great block area activity and abstract thinking for social emotional development. Children are learning self esteem and confidence in their abilities. They're learning how to express their emotions and they're practicing. There's very, very, very important social skills. They're collaborating with each other and developing and negotiating rules in their play. So thinking about the dramatic play and Children are in there and they're saying you're the mom, you're the dad, you're the doctor, you're the baby, whatever it is that they're they're negotiating the rules of their play and they're learning a sense of identity of who they are. Here's another quote I I think is important for us to think about from the American Academy of Pediatrics Play is essential to development because it contributes to the cognitive, physical, social and emotional well being of Children. And youth play also offers an ideal opportunity for parents to engage fully with their Children. Really, really great quote. I like to hand quotes on my walls and this is one that I changed them out. This is one I've had before. If you look beyond this presentation, there is a little self check that you can do to determine if you need to go back and review any of the information. There are also some resources that will be available to you if you would like to look further into any of these topics, right? Yeah, leadership
