Early Learning Imperatives

From the time of conception to the first day of kindergarten, development proceeds at a pace quicker than most are typically aware. Although there have been longstanding debates about how much The Early years really matter in the larger scheme of lifelong development, what matters is the ability to figure out the whole concept than just bits and pieces in terms of providing quality meterial.

Children come into the world biologically programmed to learn. Everything they do, every interaction they have with a person or object and everything they see, hear, smell, taste or touch is a source of stimulation or discovery of learning to the early learner. From the very beginning, a healthy child is an active participant in her or his own learning: exploring the environment, responding, communicating, cultural-exposer, physical, mental, emotional activities and in relatively short time, constructing ideas and theories about how the world works. During the first five years of life, tremendous growth occurs in intellectual, linguistic, sensory, social, emotional and physical competence. Levana’s Human Development has added two newly formed competences called “Etiquette” and “Visceral”, both Early Competences that undergird the future of learning.

It is during this period that the basic groundwork is laid for adolescent and adult dispositions and skills in every development domain.

Developmental Domains/ Examples of significant Competencies Grounded In Early Childhood

• Cognitive

– Number concepts

– Problem-solving strategies

– Concepts of time, space, order, patterns and categories

• Linguistics

– Language

– Communications skills

– Associating meaning and print

– Emergent Literacy

• Social

– social awareness

– work habits and attitudes

– prosocial understanding

– *LHD newly added* negative-social understanding

– development of conscience

– understanding expectations and rules

• Emotional

– emotional awareness of self and others

– empathy

– coping strategies

• Physical

– body awareness

– Attitude toward food

– nutrition habits

– body images

– physical mastery (fine and gross motor skills)

• *LHD newly added*  Visceral

– Problem-solving understanding

– Process and explain

– understanding concepts and relationships

– characteristics proceeding by instinct rather than intelligence

• *LHD newly added* Etiquette

– Ethical Behavior/Morals

– Professional Practice/Professional  Development for Early Childhood

– Logical Process

Working with Professionals

As a parent, you have the right to be involved in your child’s education. Once a year, you will meet with your child’s IFSP or IEP team to discuss your child’s progress and to set new goals for the next school year. If you do not agree with the plans that the team has made, as the parent you have the ability to make changes to your child’s benefits. Undergoing meditation or “due process” in which you have an advocate or lawyer to help you settle disagreements with the team. Throughout the year, it is important to communicate with the professionals working with your child, such as your child’s pediatrician and therapist. It is helpful to keep copies of academic records, IESPs, IEPs, medical records and therapeutic notes made by a professional or private company.

Inclusion

Inclusion allows all children (with or without special needs to learn in the same environment with the services and support they need to Be successful. Children may receive special services in these settings. Some characteristics of an inclusive environment are:

– Age-appropriate expectations: Adults are more likely to place age appropriate demands on a child with special needs in an intergrated setting, which may help intellectual, physical and social growth.

– understanding differences: children understand and accept each other and their individual differences.

– specialized instruction: even though each child has differences in educational and professional Development goals, child care providers and teachers make sure that their teaching methods meet the needs of each child

– Focusing on strengths and abilities: The focus is on a child’s strengths and abilities, providing support when necessary.

– Open communication: child care providers and teachers communicate openly and regularly with parents open to discuss there child’s developmental disabilities and academic achievements. Making you a meaningful participant in your child’s lesson plans and learning. All professionals require your written, information and consent before sharing any confidential information concerning your children.

– Peer “Professional Development leadership models”: children without special needs may serve as  “role models” for children with special needs.

– Relationships: friendships and social relationships are encouraged between children with or without disabilities

Reducing Stress in the classroom

The following suggestions may help reduce stress levels in your life…

• Exercise.

• Eating Healthy Foods.

• Making time to adequately sleep and rest.

• Finding hobbies you enjoy

• Get family members involved to help with responsibilities at home.

• Attending family events and activities.

• Learn to say “no” when put into questionable situations

• Making a “To-Do list” to avoid cutler involving the mind.

• seeking help from family, friends and child development specialist in your local area

• Take time to take care of yourself

Sometimes you may not feel stressed, but your body shows signs that you need to relax. Slow down, get some rest and take care of yourself for longterm benefits.

Causes of Stress in Early Childhood

Stress can be caused by a variety of positive and negative factors or a combination of factors. Within Early Childhood the causes of stress can be a little difficult to identify and improve depending on each child. Here are some of the top surveyed stress causes in the average child’s life time…

• The sickness or death of a loved one.

– When a child is experiencing a death or sickness in their family, it is ideal to console the child and allow them to vocalize emotions. Sometimes just communicating and talking about what’s going on can really help understand the situation. Children tend to overthink matters, usually based off of the lack of understanding what is going on around them. Think before speaking, you never know what is going on in someone’s head even if they vocalize there emotions. As a support/guiding model in an type of classroom setting you are responsible for teaching ways to work through problems whether emotionally or physically. This is also a great time to speak about the wonders of death with early childhood, although it can be a Conversal topic to some parents. It’s definitely necessary to show some type of compassion and caring to a child’s life. This helps build rewarding relationships and cultural understanding of each child, as an instructor you want these strong relationships with students of various cultures to help provide them the best learning opportunities possible. Enrich your understanding and the learning will flow naturally.

• Hardships affecting family and friends

– Most parents tend to place there children in public childcare setting so there children can make healthy relationships and friends in a protective environment outside of the home. There are many factors to be considered when discussing and developing human relationships. Children come into contact with many unknown problems in classrooms all the time that are well kept away from instructors. children can experience five typical factors such as…

1. Bullying; The reasons some students bully one another can begin from their own annoyances to a physical event which causes the attacks to happen. Adults are slowly becoming apart of the problem as well by openly picking favorites within classroom setting and openly lashing out at students by exposing low or high grades. Psychologically, teachers are trying to impower students to be more like the lead person in the classroom which but this method is having oppose affects. This creates grievances and stress among students.

Adolescence or normally malicious children don’t usually need a reason to bully others. Attention seeking is typically the stem reason for why attacking another student can be seen as “okay” in their eyes.

2. Non-socialable, Some children aren’t used to speaking unless spoken too. Some households uphold this behavior to teach respect among there kids. As a instructor you must respect the parents ways of raising there kids but also allow for ways the student can make friendships while attending school.

3. Physical inability, lifestyle choices can lead to negitive events in a child’s life. Sometimes being physically immobilized can affect the mental health of a child, making them want to not make friends. Reaching out to these students isn’t hard. Engage them within activities with the general population of students so they don’t feel outcasted or alienated into thinking they aren’t good enough to be around the normal kids.

4. Relationships Problems, romantic relationships are become  more and more of a hot topic among students younger and younger. But what happens when they break up? This is a cause of stress or anxiety within the classroom. Students who actively participate in romantic activities with other students are exposing themselves into the flow of rumors or center of communication. Positive and negative factors come from this event. Positive, feeling of popularity and love can quickly turn into false assumptions and rumors meant to either harm or bully.

5. Home Environments, some students home environment wether abusive or not, can cause stress. This depends on the child’s personality and moral understanding. Not everyone agrees with how things are done or not done. But this can most certainly cause for stress within the home environment. Communication is the best way to handle home problems, even if you don’t agree on matters or solutions.

• Balencing work and family

– For some children parents don’t take the time to spend with they’re children because of long work hours or lack of parental figures in the household. This can be a stress caused among kids. If the relationship is strong between the mother (or father) to the child they will begin psychologically create reasons of why the parent doesn’t care. Without fully understanding how the world works after the age of 18. More than just a simple discussion is in place for repairing your relationships with Early Childhood. Physically being apart of there life is needed to help build back the trust and love of your family member.

• Disciplining children; when disciplining children some parents believe spanking or not spanking are ideal options to raising children correctly, which depends on the child. Spanking to some parental figures think this is a clear sign of child abuse. While on the other side parents believe this is a great method for teaching lifelong hardships they may face in the future. Research has determined that both sets of parents are right in how they choose to raise there kids. Although that doesn’t mean this defuses the discussion on “spanking”. It’s much healthier to have a conversation with your child about rights and wrongs. So they have a clearl understanding of why they are being punished. Some children don’t listen, which could be the beginning appoiches to adolescent behavior which could cause for the spanking. Yet either way develops a stress within kids. This again, is one of those matters depending on a child’s developmental experiences.

• A new baby

– a new baby in the household can cause stress if the child feels the new baby is earning more attention then themselves. Children aged 1-4 years of age will notice the changes and try to manipulate the environment for more attention causing the stress to overcome them. It’s a good idea to have activities and games which the child develops outlets to avoid being a problem.

• Financial Troubles,

– either positive or negative financial situations can affect your child’s developmental abilities. Most children don’t understand the flow of currency or the ability to earn till they are in the older stages of development, yet that doesn’t excuse the fact they don’t have the knowledge to comprehend why they can’t have what other students are able to afford. Parents should have the mental responsibility to have children at points in there life when they are ready to have children. Life does tend to throw crazy things out way.  But that doesn’t change the fact it causes depression and stress.

Everyone of various age ranges handles stress differently but the first step to understanding and really helping is discussioning known solutions to the problems at hand. If you know of other solutions please comment them and help your local families out to building a stress-free environment internationally.

Journal of Educational psychology

Based on these data, the study team categorized victimization into five types based on when it began and ended and how intensive it was. Some kids were never or rarely bullied, some were victimized in their early school years but not in later years, while another group was increasingly victimized in later years.

In Kindergarten, 21 percent of children experienced “severe” victimization and another 38 percent experienced a moderate level of bullying. These proportions declined steadily over the years until the final year of high school, when less than 1 percent were severely victimized and just under 11 percent were moderately bullied.

However, across the years, 24 percent of kids fell into the researchers’ category of “high-chronic” victimization. And these were also the ones most likely to have low school engagement, academic self-perception and academic achievement, particularly in math, the study team found.

“Some pockets of children remain bullied across their school careers.”

7 domains of Early childhood

Every parent needs to know the 7 domains to raising a healthy, quality self-esteem, respectful and compassionate child.  We all want the best for our growing families yet we have to apply ourselves before we can actively engage our children with those special qualities.

Gross motor – physical education is important even for early childhood development. You should try anyway possible to engage your child’s movement, as such, crawling and jumping. Allowing your baby to move really puts a workout on the muscles!

Fine motor – kids learn how to control there movements by reaching out and grabbing for things. Fine motor skills works on the efficiency of using those skills. Learning hand-eye coordination helps to promote fine motor skills in early learns by actively engaging them in everyday activities. The more you physically allow the child to be physically apart of your world the better it is to promote your parental qualities.

Language -When older it is harder to learn a language. Although for early childhood learners you realize they absorb language development like a sponge! When children are just starting out learning how to speak their native tongue, they absorb the knowledge by listening, actively trying and applying what they know to everyday life. For some reason these traits come much easier for early childhood.

Cognitive development – Process is a elementary tool used to evaluate situations or matters in our daily lives. The early learners here still in development learning about “cause and affect skills” by using math lessons. Counting and patterns for early childhood education is the most rewarding experience toward cognitive development since mathematics education is solely based on reason. For example, “2+2=4” well the way I like to think of it is… “cause+affect=reason” with advanced learning for early childhood education this seems like the best idea to promote quality cognitive development skills and activities for learning.

Emotional/mental development – Professional development is along over the childcare community by applying advanced learning structures for education professionals to use. Our private center promotes one on one learning & child psychological services. Allowing your child to voice they’re interest and gain the most from there learning experiences. Being emotionally involved in education should be a open relationship of questions and new opportunities for the future. As society works, social networking and research is how we function as a community. Life skills is another great domain which isn’t really addressed in western schools although we have found a way to promote life skills learning activities for early childhood development purposes. Early childhood learners have been more excited about learning when they emotionally feel connected to there learning environment. In a environment where each student individually is expressing there interest in a positive atmosphere to others is a fabulous opportunity for peer to peer teaching methods in the classroom.

Self-helping – children everywhere are beginning to show little independence from their parents. Although it is so adorable to have your little one following you around but it might get weird if they are 30 following you around. Adapting to self care is a good way for early learners to experience positive independence and explore who they are as a person. Personality, is a beautiful child development experience which your children form on there own.

Morals & Values – developing morals and values are a tricky educational method in early childhood, parents have every right to promote there family’s culture or values into there children’s developmental process. The best way to approach this learning structure is to keep a open firm of mind and allow for the child to engage in physical activities where they can explore history that matters to them personally. History and political science is very slightly used In our center although you can use them as a stepping tool toward learning “right from wrong”, expanding on “cause and affect skills”, “life skills” and finally, morals.

Parenting and teaching have a lot in common. These domains only applies description to things we already know once we enter Parenthood. Being a teacher is like being a full-time parent to the future generations of vast families. As children grow, they are going to interact with the world around them. Wether positively or negatively, we are here as a guide to help kids when they fall or don’t understand something. We have our own beliefs of what’s righteous but our own experiences have not happen to the person before us. Allowing natural learning experiences and cognitive processing of various lifestyles you child might come into is all apart of the learning experience called life.