As an early childhood practitioner caring for children, a main task is developing plans and approaches to teaching that best support children’s overall development and learning. Planning helps you shape how your time together with children will unfold.
“Some days I feel like all I do is tell children, 'Don’t do this, don’t do that.' It gets to me. I feel like a broken record. When will they ever learn to behave?” Do you ever feel the same way? Learning can take a long time. When children are busy playing, it’s easy to forget the rules. You may find yourself reminding them over and over again about the same things.
Ways to act out stories with young children.
Activities and steps for teaching young children cooperation skills.
Ways to respond to teasing among children and ways to discourage teasing. Teasing is very common with young children. Although teasing is common, it has been found that it can lead to bullying, especially if not addressed with children when they are younger.
Media screens are everywhere—television, smart phones, touch pads, e-books, computers—and new ones are hitting the market frequently. Parents and educators are raising and teaching children in an era when the abundance of digital media presents unique challenges as well as educational opportunities. Limited research shows that there can be many negative effects on young children through early exposure to specific types of screen time. Knowing how to manage this technology and use it appropriately is critical for early educators.
When children use their minds to create images based on words (rather than being provided with images in a book or on screen), they develop abstract thinking skills – being able to think about something without a real object in front of them.
“Be Nice!” Adults have often heard other adults say, “Be nice!” or “That isn’t nice!” Do they expect children to just “be nice”? Of course, they would like them to, but realistically it’s not always that simple. As with all components of caring for children, they need to consider the child’s developmental ability, family, culture, and background.
Ways to include musical experiences in a child care program and ways to use music for teaching a variety of skills and concepts.
From the start of life (and some believe before birth), language can be brought to children in easy yet exciting ways. Think of what language connects for children: communication, understanding, emotion, need, social skills, literacy, cognitive associations and much more.
Ways to plan daily transitions to make changes easier for children.
Understand ways transitions and change affect young children. Learn ways to prepare children for changes.
Early childhood practitioners can use carefully chosen prompts and questions to facilitate deeper learning as children explore and experiment. They can also support rich thinking and conversations as they share their findings with peers and adults. When adults ask purposeful questions to prompt a child to recall an activity or demonstrate understanding, this can help children make connections between previous experiences and current ones.
Webbing is a form of brainstorming used to visually collect captured ideas and thoughts from a group.
While cleaning up at the end of the day, an early learning professional shared the comment, “That was a beautiful day!” You could see on his face the expression of happiness.
There is no doubt that children try to act out the things they see on TV. But studies have shown that even without TV, children will still play games for power and control. Many people think this type of play comes from the amount of TV children are watching and the kinds of shows they see.
