Balance and Control of the Body

Movement requires children to balance and control their bodies. Children must acquire balance and control of their bodies so they can learn to do harder things like writing, joining in games, or playing sports.

Balance is controlling the body's position either in place or while moving. Kids learn balance with experience and practice.

Control means moving the body in an intentional way. Good small muscle control is needed to write, color, or cut or to use ball, bats, bikes, roller skates, etc. Here are some ideas to help the children in your care learn balance and control.

Kids can :

• Ride a bike or trike, roller skate, get on a scooter
• Try walking with stilts--you can make them with coffee cans and rope
• Balance a beanbag on his head and walk around, trying to keep the beanbag balanced and in place--if this gets to easy have him slowly run around while keeping the beanbag on his head
• Walk a tightrope. Challenge kids to walk along a rope or piece of tape positioned in a straight line on the ground. They should keep their feet on the line--no stepping off. As the kids improve, make a zigzag, curve, or circle.

Books Suggestions:

Lady Bug Girl and Bumble Bee Boy by Jacky Davis

Tai Chi for Kids: Move with the Animals by Stuart Alve Olson

What are some ways that you encourage movement with children in your care?

Head Start's Future

The president talked about early childhood education in the State of the Union message. That has gotten a lot of people thinking about Head Start and what will be its future. I was intrigued by this recent editorial in the Baltimore Sun newspaper. 

Head Start: Assessing what can't be measured

With sequestration taking a bite out of our best social programs, what will be lost?

By Alan Guttman

2:06 p.m. EST, March 5, 2013

Now that sequestration is upon us, our nation's leaders continue to debate which federal programs provide the best bang for the buck. When they ask how effective Head Start is, many legislators have cited the Head Start Impact Study. It concludes that although Head Start consistently closes the achievement gap and prepares many of America's poorest and neediest children for kindergarten, by third grade most children across the nation outperform and outscore children who attend Head Start. The main arguments regarding the study's conclusions have focused on where to affix responsibility for the "reopening" of the achievement gap: with Head Start or the elementary schools that Head Start children later attend.
I suggest that to determine Head Start's true effectiveness, lawmakers take a closer look at the impacts that Head Start programs make on children and families that are not as easily quantified. Having served as a preschool and kindergarten teacher, education specialist and Head Start project director, I would like to share my life study of what I call "immeasurable impacts."

I will never forget my first day of teaching at the 102nd Street School in the Watts section of Los Angeles. At circle time, when children sit on a rug and have an opportunity to talk about themselves and their lives, one 4-year-old boy shared that his dad kept a gun under his pillow. For a young child growing up in a community where daily acts of violence were a way of life and where he and his parents could not even feel secure in their own home, my classroom was his safe haven. It was a place for him to play, to laugh and to learn with others from his neighborhood without fear. Head Start programs continue to be located in some of the most violent communities and continue to provide this sustaining oasis where children can grow up worry-free for up to eight hours or more each day, Monday through Friday. Impact: immeasurable.

• Related
• Challenging young minds
• Pre-K investment will pay off

During summers when I was not teaching preschoolers, I taught parenting classes to mothers and fathers in East Los Angeles. These 10-session classes focused on teaching young parents about the stages of child development and appropriate practices for supporting their child's emotional, social, physical and academic development and growth. We also studied strategies for addressing difficult behaviors, with a focus on alternatives to corporal punishment. The curriculum was adapted from a child abuse prevention program.
Parents shared their challenges and expressed their frustrations at not knowing how to respond when their children misbehaved. Parents sometimes cried as they described their feelings of helplessness. They were relieved to hear that other parents struggled with the same problems and were then grateful to learn effective and positive ways to respond to and support their children. Head Start programs consistently provide some of the best models for involving parents, valuing and strengthening their role as their child's first teacher. Impact: immeasurable.

In the mid-90s, I served with the Riverside County Office of Education in California as a Head Start education specialist, providing training, technical assistance and support to early childhood educators throughout the county. I remember visiting a Head Start classroom in the farming community of Coachella just east of Palm Springs. This program served a large number of migrant and seasonal farm worker families. During this visit, I observed a 4-year-old girl on an outdoor swing. When I walked closer I saw that one of her arms was only partially formed, ending at the elbow. She swung as fast and as high as any other child her age as she held on tightly to the chains with both of her arms. When I spoke with her teacher, I learned that this little girl was not classified as disabled since no adaptations were required for her to fully engage in all preschool activities, including climbing and swinging.

Head Start programs have provided high-quality, inclusive services for children with and without disabilities since its inception. Today it remains the only preschool program that mandates that at least 10 percent of the children enrolled and served be children with disabilities, including children with severe disabilities. Impact: immeasurable.

These are just a few examples of impacts achieved every day by Head Start programs. With all Head Start programs facing a 5 percent reduction due to sequestration, I urge legislators to consider the immeasurable impacts that Head Start makes on America's poor and at-risk children and maintain full funding for this vital program.

Alan Guttman, a Baltimore resident, is an early care and education consultant with over 30 years of experience serving children and their families as a teacher, program director, parent educator and college instructor.

What do you think about Head Start and its future?

Mathematics in the Early Childhood Classroom

Hello Friends, 

Mathematics is the language of science. Recently, much attention has been focused ,on the need to improve the technical and scientific skills of American students. The demands of the 21st century will require a workforce that is competent in and comfortable with mathematics. Educators should start preparing students for these demands in pre-school.  As care givers of young children, we know that most children have the capability to learn and become competent in mathematics. Unfortunately, for many young children, the potential to learn mathematics in the early years of school is not realized.  Sadly, this is the case for low income children, many of whom start out behind in mathematics and will remain so without extensive, high-quality mathematics instruction. In many instances, this is because teachers and care givers are not comfortable with mathematics themselves. 

Mathematics Learning in Early Childhood recommends that a coordinated national early childhood mathematics initiative be put in place to improve mathematics teaching and learning for all children ages 3-6. The goal should be to ensure that all children enter elementary school with the mathematical foundational skills they need for success.

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) recommends in the document, Curriculum Focal Points, the following content standards for preschool children:

·         number and operations

·         geometry and spatial sense

·         measurement

·         patterns (algebra)

·         data analysis

How are you teaching math to the children in your care? We will also break down each of the content standards in following posts.

Teaching Young Children to Self-regulate

Guidance Leads to Self-regulation

Young children do best when they know what to expect. Involving young children in making the rules is one way to help children become more self-regulating. When youngsters decide what rules they need, they have an opportunity to think about WHY they need rules, what rules would help them regulate their behavior, and how they can best enforce the rules with each other. When children take responsibility for these aspects of classroom life, they are learning how to get along with others in a group setting.

How do children benefit from being involved in making the rules?

·         Oral language –When children are encouraged to discuss the need for particular rules and to express the wording for those rules, they are given the opportunity to develop oral language skills.

·         Written language – When caregivers write children’s rules in their words, children are motivated to read and make sense of the written works.

·         Self-regulation -When children are consulted about the rules, they have the opportunity to understand the need particular rules. This understanding leads to increased feeling of ownership of the rules and procedures, shared responsibility for what happens in the classroom, and a better understanding of why they need to follow and enforce rules.

Have you involved the children in your care in making rules? Tell us about how that has worked for you.