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 | The curriculum for the infants and toddlers involves everything that happens to the child throughout the day. Responsive care giving is the key component to setting up a safe and secure environment and trusting relationships. Everything that a child experiences is a learning opportunity. For example, diaper changes are perfect opportunities for learning experiences: language; singing gently to a child; showing gentle touches; letting the child know that this is not a hurried or rushed experience and that they are valued and precious individuals; gently moving their legs in a bicycle motion; stimulating movement; or having them reach and grasp for an object. Throughout the day, teachers will take advantage of these care giving experiences that are so important in the early years of life and turn them into meaningful and positive experiences for a child’s healthy development.
Theories of educational practices that describe how children construct their knowledge and differ in their stages of development influence the curriculum. There are at least two curriculum guiding principles that are consistent throughout all the classes at the LSU Child Care Center.
The first principle concerns how children learn. It is only through the active, meaningful engagement and experimentation with objects and people that children can begin to construct their knowledge, logical reasoning, and social relationships. This happens most easily through children’s play and socialization experiences.
The second principle relates to the role of the teacher. At the LSU Child Care Center, each teacher creates an intellectual and an emotionally safe and supportive setting in which to encourage every child’s overall development. To do so, all the teachers have a solid knowledge of child development as a foundation for understanding and assessing children’s growth. In addition, the teachers appreciate the developmental trajectory of the many areas of the curriculum and include simple to increasingly more complex activities in each of the domains.
In both cases, the principles that guide the curriculum planning and implementation at the LSU Child Care Center have their roots in what is called emergent curriculum. Emergent curriculum is sensible but not predictable. It requires practitioners to trust in the power of play – trust in spontaneous choice making among many possibilities. Good programs for young children encourage children to become competent players. Children’s programs that are also good for teacher growth encourage teachers as well to become competent players, choosing among possibilities and thus constructing their own hands-on understanding of the teaching-learning process.
Emergent curriculum arises naturally from adult-child interactions and situations that allow for "teachable moments". It connects learning with experience and prior learning. It includes all interests of children and responds to their interests rather than focusing on a narrow, individual, or calendar driven topic. It is process rather than product driven. The curriculum is typically implemented after an idea or interest area emerges from the group of children.
The LSU Child Care Center uses NAEYC (naeyc.org) and zerotothree (zerotothree.org) as benchmarks for curriculum. |
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