I wrote a paper for a college class called "The School-Age Child", which is aimed generally at after-school care. I would like to share with you the parts of that paper that were strictly my own, in other words, not the parts sourced and cited from the textbook, but my own experiences that I shared, as they touch on some of the knowledge in that text.
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Children's
healthy physical growth may be influenced by how much time they spend
exercising, as well as the food that is consumed.
In addition to providing wholesome meals and snacks, and trying
to make sure those children who are poor have some nutritious food to eat, I
would also share with the children books that help them to understand the value
of good food. One book that I like is Gail Gibbon's The Vegetables We Eat.
Another one I like for children is Who Put the Cookies in the Cookie Jar? by George Shannon. While this
book does promote sweets, they are homemade, and it provides cultural lessons
as well, as it shows all the different people who make the ingredients and
supplies possible. I feel this gives them an appreciation for the people who
provide our food, as well as the value of food, apart from highly-processed
foods.
When I taught a weekly four-hour preschool class a few years
ago, we had limited indoor space and equipment for working on gross-motor
skills. We did have outdoor time, but during some of our indoor time, we
encouraged physical activity with games such as Duck, Duck, Goose, and other
circle games.
Simple crafts are one way that children can practice fine
motor skills. When my children were young, we often kept many of our crafts
very inexpensive, simple, and child-oriented. The children might cut strips,
and tape together paper chains, or cut snowflakes by folding and cutting white
paper. They would cut pictures of people out of old catalogs to use in their
imaginative play. They would make their own greeting cards or placemats out of
old greeting cards and other pictures. All they needed were the supplies and
ideas, and then they would teach each other and have a good time, not realizing
they were practicing skills at the same time, but thinking they were just
having fun.
I know how much an appropriate environment can help children
in cognitive development, because I experienced the reverse during the first few
weeks that I taught a weekly preschool homeschool co-op. I would bring the
weeks' resources in bags each week. We had no permanent set-up at the time,
plus, other children and adults came through our room to get to wherever they
were going. It was very chaotic, and the children could not focus, until we
found a better facility, where I could set up different kinds of toys and
supplies in different areas of the room for children to select from. This
changed the whole atmosphere and allowed the children to pursue learning with joy.
We didn't have carpeting so it was noisy, especially when they played with the
trucks and cars, but it was, nevertheless, peaceful, with the children knowing
where everything was from week to week and being able to pursue their interests
during free play time, and focus during structured lessons.
Another area of development is psychosocial and moral. When I
taught kindergarten through second grade children many years ago, we discussed
the rules thoroughly, in language they could understand, along with the reasons
for those rules. If a child told on another child for something (which was only
encouraged if safety was involved), or if two children got into a physical or
verbal altercation, we would discuss it thoroughly, one on one, both so I could
understand what happened, and also so they could understand what happened and
what they might do differently in the future. I did this with my own children
also, but as I learned more and they grew older, sometimes we would change some
kinds of rules according to the need or situation.
P.S. A special thank you here to my dear friend, Ivonne Hernandez, for finding us a more suitable facility for that homeschool co-op class that I mention above, and to my new friend, Beate Buescher, for the recommendation of the lovely book, Who Put the Cookies in the Cookie Jar?
