What is Early Childhood Education? #AllAboutPreschoolers #MyFriendAlexa

Hi Everyone,

This is my first post for #MyFrinendAlexa, and I am really excited to share my theme for the campaign, “All About Preschoolers”. Here I will be sharing all the important topics related to preschoolers from, It’s importance to how to choose the best preschool, health and hygiene and many more.

In terms of a child’s physical, intellectual, emotional and social development early childhood is considered as one of the most crucial stage of life. It is the time when children need high quality personal care and learning experience as the growth of mental and physical abilities advance at an astonishing rate and a very high proportion of learning takes place from birth to age six.

Whether anyone believes it or not, education begins from the moment the child is brought home from the hospital and continues when the child starts to attend playgroups and kindergarten. The learning capabilities of humans continue for rest of their lives but not at the intensity that is demonstrated in the preschool years. Now keeping this in mind, babies and toddlers need positive early learning experiences to help their intellectual, social and emotional development and lays the foundation for later school success.

Aids In Early Childhood Education

Parent

During the first three years parents will be the main influence in the child’s learning experience and education. Therefore, what parents do and expose their children to, have a vast impact on the development of the child.

Environment

Environment plays a very important role in child’s growth. It is essential that the environment that the child is placed in during these years be as positive and intellectually stimulating as possible.

Speech Development

Speech development is one of the first tools that a child will demonstrate. And a parent or care giver can have a vast impact on child’s speech development by the amount of time that is spent talking with and reading to a child.

Play

Most of the child development experts will agree with me that play is very important in the learning and emotional development of all children. Play is multi-faceted as while having fun, often many skills can be learned. Play helps children learn relationship and social skills and develop values and ethics. Functional play helps children to develop motor and practice skills. Water and sand play is a favourite amongst pre-schooler children and a valuable teaching tool. Constructive play is characterized by building or creating something like puzzles, building blocks, puppets and easy craft activities. Pretend play allows children to express themselves and events in their lives which in turns helps them process emotions, practice social skills, develop a rich imagination, learn values and also develop language skills.

There is a range of early childhood education and care services for young children, include license and unlicensed, center based and home-based services. Talk to individual providers to find out about how they may cater for your child. It is important to consider the full range of early education and care options available to your child.

Education and care services aim to meet the education, care and development needs of children. There are range of different models of early education and care services. Most of these services are approved to operate by the Department of Education and Communities.

Important areas of learning

Health and physical well being are the basis for all learning and development. Such areas as eating, habits, attitudes towards exercise and self care routines build from the child’s earliest experiences. One of the most important things children learn in the early years is about themselves, that is, they develop a picture of themselves that affects the way they approach any situation, task or relationship with another person. In other words, they develop a self concept. An important part of that self concept is the picture they have of themselves as learners. Is it okay to be curious, to explore, to ask questions, to tackle problems, to try to figure things out, to experiment? Is it okay to try something and fail sometimes? Being a good learner means having a go, seeing yourself as capable, and taking reasonable risk. There are many different ways to categorize learning in the early years, but whatever the categories, it is important for parents, and others who work and live with children, to keep in mind the broad range of kinds learning that are important in the early years.

• Use of body, including hands
• Respect for others
• How to relate to others, both adults and other children
• How to resolve conflict
• Problem solving skills
• Communication getting used to things that make people different from each other
• Self knowledge, understanding of feelings, a sense of your own strength, talents and uniqueness
• Confidence, a sense of belonging to family, community, culture
• How to look after and take care of yourself
• Last but not the least, behaving in acceptable ways and controlling your own behaviour

Early childhood education typically focuses on five domains

• Cognitive
• Language
• Social-Emotional
• Fine motor skills
• Gross motor skills

Early childhood educators are professionally trained to observe and enhance children’s development skills and refer children appropriately for additional services when a delay is expected. However, all children do not develop at the same rate and may not complete a development task when it is scheduled to be completed. If a child is having trouble with a development task, the child’s teacher can do extra activities with that child to help the child master the development task they are struggling with. Early childhood educators are trained to know what the time frame is in which to wait before they refer a child for additional services.

Children can never be too young to educate and the younger a child begins education the better. Infant’s and toddler’s brains are rapidly growing and this age is the perfect time to begin educating their little brains.

I am taking my blog to the next level with Blogchatter’s #MYFriendAlexa.

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