Infant Day Care Write a 1-2 paragraph post addressing the following: What qualit
ID: 3469780 • Letter: I
Question
Infant Day Care
Write a 1-2 paragraph post addressing the following:
What qualities a child care center should have to assure a safe and developmentally appropriate environment for 1- and 2-year-olds? Use information from the following website: https://www.naeyc.org/our-work/families/10-naeyc-program-standards
Research a child care center in your neighborhood (online, visit, phone call, personal experience, review from friend, etc.) and share your review with us here. What center did you review? What services and philosophies did they have? Discuss the pros and cons. How supportive would this center be for healthy attachment and development? Rate the center from 0 (poorest) to 5 (best) and support your rating with information from the text and the NAEYC's standards website.
Explanation / Answer
An early childhood environment is many things: It's a safe place where children are protected from the elements and are easily supervised, and it's where the important activities of the day take place, such as playing, eating, sleeping, washing hands, and going to the bathroom. Since most early childhood philosophies stress the importance of play, hands-on-learning, and whole child development, a good early childhood environment supports these activities. Children need to explore, experiment, and learn basic knowledge through direct experience. Indeed, childhood is a time when we learn firsthand about the physical world the feel of water, the constant pull of gravity, the stink of rotten fruit, and the abrasive feel of concrete on a bare knee. Play provides a way for children to integrate all their new experiences into their rapidly developing minds, bodies, emotions, and social skills. Brain research supports this idea, stressing that children learn best through an integrated approach combining physical, emotional, cognitive, and social growth. The role of the teacher is critical in a child’s life. Children depend on teachers to be their confidant, colleague, model, instructor, and nurturer of educational experiences. A basic human need is the need to belong. Children need to feel they belong, too. They need to be close to people they know, have familiar and comfortable objects, and be in a setting that has a personal history for them. Environments should provide children with opportunities for a lot of developmentally appropriate physical activities. Young children are physical beings. They learn most effectively through total physical involvement and require a high level of physical activity, variety, and stimulus change. Young children need hands-on activities—playing in water, building mud pies, making things out of wood, putting a doll to bed, etc. They also need lots of ways to practice and integrate new experiences into existing mental structures—dramatic play, drawing, taking photographs, using language, and making things with blocks. Color and decorations should be used to support the various functional areas in the classroom and center, provide needed stimulus change and variety, and develop different areas and moods in the room. Vibrant colors such as red, magenta, and yellow work well in the gross motor area; soothing blues and green are good color choices for hands-on learning centers; and whites and very light colors are good for areas that need lots of concentration and light. Children who spend most of their day in one environment need surfaces that respond to them, not hard surfaces that they must conform to. Sand, water, grass, rugs and pillows, and the lap of a caregiver respond to a child’s basic physical needs. Learning materials can be simple, complex, or super complex. Simple materials are those with essentially one function, complex those with two, and super complex, those with more than two. For example, a pile of sand, is a simple unit. If one adds a plastic shovel to the sand it becomes a complex unit. Young children have unique personalities and needs that require us to respond to them as individuals, not as members of a group. The environment must be responsive to this need. Ease of cleaning, maintenance, supervision, cost, and adult aesthetics should not detract from providing spaces children feel are designed for them. Children need to have private areas, secluded corners, lofts, and odd-shaped enclosures. Even environments carefully designed and equipped for young children do not meet the needs of children with disabilities. Adaptations must be made carefully for any child with special needs, be they physical challenges, learning disabilities, or emotional issues. An organized, properly equipped, and well-maintained program environment facilitates the learning, comfort, health, and safety of the children and adults who use the program.First-aid kits, fire extinguishers, fire alarms, and other safety equipment are installed and available. All the materials and equipment used should be appropriate for children’s ages, skills and abilities and, is available and kept clean, safe, and in good repair. Due to time limit,remaining questions can be asked as another question,they will be answered,thankyou for your cooperation