The general topic play. I am a firm believer in play in early childhood classrooms. The subtopic I chose to use in the simulation for this course is how play can encourage the different developmental areas, social, cognitive, and language. Play is a vital part of a young child's development. Children learn many things, good and bad, from interacting with their peers. Play is being pushed out of early childhood programs and I can see first hand the effect it is having on children. I believe that many behavior problems would not exist if the proper amount of play was still incorporated into early childhood programs. For example, the reading program my district has adopted has my kindergarteners sitting on the carpet for at least an hour everyday. I was always taught to keep carpet time less than twenty minutes. I do a lot of correcting behavior because they get very restless and I can't blame them.
So far the simulation process has been interesting to me. I came into the course not sure what to expect. I saw the word research and thought lots of boring reading. But so far I have to say it has been quite interesting. Filling in the charts have taught me how to go about reading research and how to better understand research.
Does anyone have any advice and/or insight that might help with the process?
Play in general whether it is in the early childhood classroom or the public school classroom is needed to help children to take a break and unwind for a thirty minutes. I can remember growing up as a child and recess was apart of the daily schedule throughout my school years. Without recess time, most children make bad choices that leaves to misbehaving and disrespectful to their teachers too. I am a firm believer that play time should be apart of every school system daily schedule.
ReplyDeleteIt is difficult to teach parents the importance of play however it is even more difficult to bring the administration into the play mode. Continue to practice play as much as possible, and your end results will speak for themselves.
ReplyDeletePlay is such an interesting topic in early childhood education. Some people feel that play is beneficial to multiple areas of child development while others may feel that play is a waste of time during school hours and that academics should take top priority. I'm sure your topic will bring up many of those controversies.
ReplyDeleteI too am not quite sure what to expect of this course as it is the first in the MSECS program that has been more heavily research-based.
Best of luck to you through the simulation.
Caitlin