Infant Toddler Curriculum Essay

Christina J. Groark, Stephanie K. McCarthy, Afton R. Kirk. (2014). Early Child Development: From Theory to Practice. Bridgepoint Education, Inc.

Early childhood education curriculums are becoming a national curriculum in most countries. With more governments and society thinking about education of under-fives we are seeing shifts in thinking and education to meet the changing world. We are developing children skills for the future to create a society where children feel they belong and can contribute to society. Curriculums are being influenced my social, political, cultural, historical and theoretical issues that are impacting different curriculums in the world. I am going to explore and develop my understanding about three different curriculums to recognise the different influences affecting curriculums. I am going to explore the curriculums of Te Whāriki: New Zealand, Belonging, Being and Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia and Curriculum for Excellence: Scotland. This will allow me to develop an understanding of other curriculums which I have not heard about to discover other way to education that I have not been taught in teacher’s college.

Also, in this assignment, each member of our group took time to research quotes, videos, articles and images for infant and toddler developmental domains and activities. When we were searching through our topics, we saw a huge selection of images that somebody had already saved on their Pinterest account. Each image gave us a proper explanation. For example, when we searched for infant and toddler environments, there were several beautiful images that popped up. We filtered through the Reggio Emilia Philosophy, which gave us details about how we can arrange setup outdoor activities inside the classrooms and look for which activities and materials we can arrange in different areas. These pins gave us an idea how the childcare must be designed

I believe that as an early childhood educator my goal will be to promote the physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development of each child. I also believe that play should be the base of learning since children learn best by doing. I believe that a balance between teacher-directed and child-initiated activities is essential balance can be developed by using the developmentally appropriate practice approach, which means that activities should be “appropriate for each child and relevant to the child’s ability, needs and interests, also including the child’s family and being respectful to the child’s culture.

The NYS Early Learning Guidelines were created as a reference guide by the Early Childhood Advisory Council (ECAC) for those who are responsible for the care and education of young children. These guidelines can help early childhood professionals with learning and developing their skills in order to foster children’s growth and development. The guideline focuses on the five domains: Physical well-being, Health and Motor Development, Social and Emotional Development, Approaches to learning, Cognition and General Knowledge, Language, Communication and Literacy. Each of these domains are separated by milestone that children, generally, accomplishes at a certain age. The three age groups are Infancy (birth to 18 months), Toddlerhood (18 months

Berk, L. E. (2012). Infants, Children, and Adolescents (7th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

I think curriculum is important to infants and toddlers even though it is controversial between caregivers. According to the brain developments of different age groups, special curriculums provided for infants and toddlers help them grow beneficially. I think the safety, good attachment and respect are essential to infants and toddlers, which gives them senses of whom they are and their equal human rights. Also, these are the themes of curriculum. If we, as roles of caregivers, can practice these themes every day, then infants and toddlers can get advanced communications and growths.

On behalf of the early childhood initiative to provide early intervention for those infants and toddlers experiencing difficulty, I thank you for your engagement and cooperation. This system is designed to “[help] eligible babies and toddlers learn the basic and brand-new skills that typically develop during the first three years of life, such as: physical (reaching, rolling, crawling, and walking) and self-help (eating, dressing) skills (Center for Parent Information and Resources, 2014). We are dedicated to working with your family and your individual needs. This system is not meant to bog you down with out-of-town appointments from professionals, but instead provide you with support and suggestions for the healthy development of your child.

In developing my goals for my activity, I consulted the curriculum guide by The Albert Shanker Institute (2009), the HighScope curriculum (Epstein, 2012), and research by Dodge et al. (2002) describing preschool development. According to Dodge et al. (2002), there are four main areas of development that are relevant to preschool aged children: social/emotional, physical, cognitive, and language. I will be focusing mainly on language and physical development, while briefly touching on cognitive development.

In order to understand the predominant program models for early childhood education let the consensus for model be described as a curriculum based approach or a curriculum. What does curriculum mean? For the sake of identifying quality, curriculum is a key component for building sustainable early childhood education programs. Curriculum encompasses ideas and materials transferred to a student to develop knowledge and skills as framed by identified expectations. The NAEYC 's definition states " . . . in general curriculum is seen as the means by which a society helps learners acquire the knowledge, skills, and values that that society deems most worth having." ( ,2015) The frameworks of Developmental-Interactional Approach, Direct Instructional Model, and Reggio Emilia Approach are approaches observed in early childhood

Infant curricula help children to achieve developmental outcomes and goals, which are desirable within the community. Curriculum entails all what a child experiences as they interact with the classroom environment. Two-year-olds learn through play and imitation and as such, teachers should design a curriculum that incorporates the developmental areas of the children, such as cognitive, physical, emotional, language and communication, and sensory and perception.

There are there three types of curriculum models in contemporary learning and the development of early childhood education.

The article, The Emergence of Emergent Curriculum, talks about the two different ways that a curriculum is set. The first way is emergent curriculum which goal is to respond to every child’s interest. Emergent curriculum starts off as being a day to day plan based upon a response to their observations and reflections on the children’s interest and needs taken during the teachers observing the children’s play and recording what they saw, only after this is the curriculum set into place. Then during the last half of the twentieth century there was concern for social equality. This led to the creation of the Head Start program. Preschool teachers were expected to

As I reflect on this assignment my perspective on curriculum has certainly changed. Now, I understand the reasoning behind each action which I was unfamiliar with in the past. This class has definitely been a challenge for me especially since I had never created a curriculum for a higher grade other than preschool. Although this course was primarily geared for K-12, I am able to implement various methods to our preschool curriculum. For instance, I plan to use Ubd, Enduring Understanding, Essential Questions, Assessment, and Transferability. Moving forward I also plan to

The meaning of the term’ curriculum’ is difficult to define. For school, Pratt (in Brady and Kennedy, 2014, p. 3) argues that curriculum can be ‘an organized set of formal educational and training intentions’. For students, Marsh and Wills (in Brady and Kennedy, 2014, p. 3) maintain that curriculum is ‘an interrelated set of plans and experiences that a student undertakes under the guidance of the school’, while for teachers, the challenge is to develop curricula that will cater for the needs of all students (Ah Sam & Ackland, 2005). There are various meanings attached to the term’ curriculum’. My personal definition for school curriculum is that schools develop programs of different study areas basing on the content of the national curriculum document; teachers plan their teaching basing on the programs; eventually, students experience the curriculum by engaging in diverse teaching activities. In this essay, I will be discussing The Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) in relation to the strategic plan and teaching philosophy of Hampton Park East Kindergarten.