BALANCING YOUR LEARNING ACTIVITIES
As you design your curriculum for your program you want to make sure that all the activities you plan support all the developmental domains. Here are 5 of the major learning domains:
• SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT - means how children start to understand who they are, what they are feeling and what to expect when interacting with others. As children develop socially, they learn to take turns, help their friends, play together, and cooperate with others.
• EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT – means developing an awareness that includes the ability to recognize and understand our own feelings and actions and those of other people, and how our own feelings and actions affect ourselves and others.
• PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT - refers to the advancements and refinements of motor skills, or, in other words, children's abilities to use and control their bodies. Physical development is an important part of infant and toddler development.
• LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT -refers to the process through which children acquire, or learn language. Language can be thought of in two main categories: receptive and expressive. Receptive refers to a child's ability to understand the communication of other people, including spoken words, gestures and written words.
• COGNTIVE DEVELOPMENT - means how children think, explore and figure things out. It is the development of knowledge, skills, problem solving and dispositions, which help children to think about and understand the world around them. Brain development is part of cognitive development.
When choosing your activities, you must not only take into consideration the learning domains, but also you must take into consideration the age and stage of development of each child in your care.
In determining how to develop your curriculum, take the following into consideration:
1. You should have a balance of structured and unstructured learning activities. Self-initiated play is an example of unstructured activities. These activities allow the children to practice their newly developed skills.
Examples of unstructured activities are: block building, water and sand play
2. Structured learning activities include activities that are designed to address a child’s certain areas of development.
For example: Stringing beads, working on puzzles, cooking.
3. You should balance both outdoor and indoor learning activities. Activities such as story time, painting and music can be held both outdoors or indoors depending on the weather.
4. Active and quiet activities should be balanced during the day. Too many active learning activities in a row can overstimulate the children. A very active learning experience should be followed by a quiet activity.
Balancing your learning activities will assure that you are taking advantage of the optimum learning times, appropriate activities and keep the children’s interest.
Resources
Working With Young Children, Judy Herr