Whole Child Development
It’s easy to feel like early childhood educators have enough on their plates as they educate young children. It’s a big job, with little downtime in the daily schedule, and no hazard pay (though there are plenty of hazards…especially during flu season…)
If you could measure the quality of an early childhood setting by only one factor, what would it be?
I have my finger in many technology-laden pots. But technology is NOT my jam. This site where you’re reading this, the Facebook page where you likely found it, the podcast you may have listened to, the resources you may have used — these all require SOME degree of technical acumen. And it is honestly the hardest part of the work I do.
When I do workshops and trainings with teachers, I often hear several variations of the same question.
“But what about at home?”
“Process over product”. We hear that phrase frequently in early childhood, most often referring to the perspective that the process of participating in the creative process is more important to a child’s development than the craft-factory product we may be tempted to focus on.
What does “teaching reading” look like in a developmentally appropriate early childhood classroom?
One of my favorite stories from my parents’ early experiences as a young married couple at law school ends with my mom opening her front door to find a friendly neighbor standing there next to my sister (a young preschooler at the time), who had stripped down to her nothings and was covered in mud.
My sister was elated.
I loved playing volleyball in high school. I took pride in being a scrappy player. “Ball first, body second” was the motto that led me to be colorfully adorned with bruises all over my elbows and hips during each season. It’s also the reason I wound up in the ER (twice) for stitches in my chin. In my view, the ball wasn’t unplayable until the second it hit the ground. Up until that point, I did everything I physically could to get my body to the ball.
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