Early Childhood Education

QUOTES THAT SUMMARIZE WHAT PLAY REPRESENTED FOR ME AS A CHILD PICTURES OF ESSENTIAL    PLAY ITEMS I ENJOYED    AS A CHILD As I was growing up, playing was a way of life. My mother encouraged play and so did the entire neighborhood. I remember vividly how on the weekends we would get together and ride our bikes from one block to the next. I remember jumping rope day in and day out. The weekends we looked forward to. Groups of friends would get together to ride the bus to Greenville to go to Rollerworld. Rollerworld was the place where we would meet people from another town and maybe become friends.  Play was considered a way of connecting with one another. Today play is so much different from the way I engaged as a child. Technology has taken over the way our children communicate with each other. Even as I look at my 13-year-old son and compare his way of communicating, for him he mostly engages his peers using a cell phone and video game...

My family is my world. I uploaded pictures of my three young men and myself. Having a relationship is a very important thing to have in life. A relationship can be with your guy friends, a girlfriend, or family related. When people think of relationships, they usually think of having a girlfriend or boyfriend. Having a good relationship with your family is very important. It is always good to have a nice relationship with your family because you can gain trust and you know that they are always there for you. The key ingredients for any successful relationship are a willingness to trust in each other, to communicate effectively, be able to apologize when we make mistakes and take responsibility for own behavior, to maintain a sense of humor and humility and above all to give each other and the relationship time by being actively involved and sharing a significant part of our lives together. Relationships evolve and change all the time. Key factors in sustaining and...

When I think in terms of the whole child, my mind immediately shift focus on the well-being of that child. This can include their health, safety, their support system, how they are engaged and even how they are challenged. A standardized test in my opinion only measures the child’s skill level as it pertains to a subject. I think their ability to cope with any given situation whether good or bad should be assessed. Many families face stressful situations, including parental depression, community violence, and poverty. Adversities like these can be painful for the children in these families. But the hopeful news is that research on children facing such problems has shown that many children show resilience and do surprisingly well. Resilience is the ability to cope with the stress caused by such challenging situations. You can encourage resilience in your child and develop it in yourself. Remember, even those children who are facing the most difficult life situations do not all turn ou...

Poverty creates long-term disadvantages for children. The consequences of poverty—emotional issues, delayed development and lower academic achievement, among others—put a child behind peers who do not struggle with poverty. Poverty affects an increasing number of children every day. As a child and even some of my adulthood I lived in poverty. I can remember countless time my mother struggling to get the bills paid. My mother was a single parent raising four children on her very small salary. It wasn’t until I started living on my own I realized I too was living in poverty. I would attend school in the day and work at night to maintain my household. It was a struggle trying to make ends meet. I was determined to break the barrier of poverty that had held so many of family members hostage. I worked extremely hard and earned my bachelor degree.   I was able to maintain employment that release some of the burden off my family. For this week, I decided to focus on Indonesia....

SIDS SUDDEN INFANT DEATH SYNDROME Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is the sudden, unexplained death of an infant younger than one year old. Some people call SIDS "crib death" because many babies who die of SIDS are found in their cribs. SIDS is the leading cause of death in children between one month and one year old. Most SIDS deaths occur when babies are between one month and four months old. Premature babies, boys, African Americans, and American Indian/Alaska Native infants have a higher risk of SIDS. Although health care professionals don't know what causes SIDS, they do know ways to reduce the risk. These include: This information is meaningful to me because so many people are not even aware SIDS. It is so important that families be educated on the safe sleep habits when it comes to their infant. Compared to rates in other developed countries, the U.S. SIDS rate remains high. For example, in 2005, the U.S. rate ranked second...