What is caring for a child?
It relates to meeting the health, safety and nutritional needs of a child in a care by parents or caregivers.

Health relates to the physical condition of both body and mind of a person, including the social and emotional well-being of the person.

Good Health is the result of:

• Reducing unncessary risk
• Preventing illness
• Promote well-being of the individual

To create such atmosphere and environment, caregivers need to focus on:

• Safety
• Nutrition
• Health

If the three above are not present, the child will be:

• Lacking of good health practices
• Living in unsafe environment
• Having poor nutrition

WHO defitnition of Health:

Health is a state of complete social, mental and physical well-being and not merely the absense of disease or infirmity.

Being health means that the likelihood of imminent or future ill health is minimised and there is a state of mental and physical fitness.

A risk factor in health and well-being of children can come from any area of the environment:

• Physical environment
  - Mother’s health, child’s health
  - Clean, safe and healthy home
  - Safe attractive school, neighbourhood
  - Available community facilities should be attractive and safe
• Social & emotional environment
  - Relationship with parents
  - Relationship with immediate and extended families
  - Relationshp with teachers, peers, and neighrbours
  - Sense of belongings, self-esteeem/confidence to operate in the greater community
• Economic environment
  - Family could afford child
  - Economic/work status of parents
  - Economic status of neighbourhood, services available for assistance
  - Economic status of greater community services for assistance for assistance
• Cultural environment
  - Ethnicity
  - Cultural practices of family
  - Neighbourhood ethnicity and cultural practices in school, churches, neighbourhood…
  - Sense of belonging / acceptance / ethnicity& cultural practices of great community

Healthy environment is established and maintained by:
Health promotion - checking for immunization, proper hand washing & diapering techniques, providing adequate nutrition, arrange for hearing, vision and dental screening tests.

Child protection - promoting safety practices; safett seats in travel, checking toys & other equipment for hazards, providing low-risk environment

Disease prevention

Risk is a likelihood of harm or danger occuring. Knowledge of risk and risk management are effective ways to protect and prevent the chance for danger/difficulties to occur

Result of health risks:
- Illness, infection, disease, mental illness
- Developmental difficulty
- Death

Result of safety risks:
- Accidents
- Disability
- Death

Result of nutritional risks:
- Developmental delay
- Growth retardation
- Poor health and lack of resistance to infection or disease

Risk management strategies to remove risk factors:
- Health promotion
- Safety protection
- Nutritional education

To maintain well-being of children, risk must be managed properly through compliance of standards and guidelines set for child care facilities, training and staffing.

Well-being is measured by wellness, degree of activity, resiliency, proper growth, at-level development and genral vitality.

4 Basic Goals for high quality child care programs:
- Maximise health status of the children
- Mnimise risk to health, safety and well-being of children
- Utilise education as a tool to promote health and risk reduction for both children and adults
- Recognise importance of guidelines, standards, and laws as they apply to health, safety and well-being of the children(child care) E.g. Occupational Safety and Health Act 1994

WHAT THE ****?!?!? Sorry… Ever since the first term, this college had messed with not only my payments but also my subjects. Good thing this time I haven’t buy the textbooks.

During my first term, they changed one of the subjects and I had bought the textbook. Now the textbook is lying there doing nothing. By the time the subject is offered again, don’t tell me they are going to change the textbook! Which means I spent the previous money for textbook I don’t need!

This term, it’s supposed to be Music & Drama for Young Children and Play & Learning. I just got their notification that it’s going to be Music & Drama for Young Children and Health, Safety & Nutrition.

I’m glad I didn’t get my textbook yet. Phew…

I’m sure Music & Drama for Young Children should be very interesting but I hope it doesn’t involve musical notes and those technical musical things as I can never understand those *LOL*

As for Health, Safety & Nutrition, this will require lots of fact memorising! Feels like going back to secondary school science and home science subjects.

Finally, two papers down! End of semester one. We are now having one week semester break.

Next semester would be studying Play & Learning and Music & Drama for Young Children.

I wonder when we will be able to study the Foundation of Early Childhood Education and Observation & Assessment of Young Children?

I can’t stand seeing a blog not updated for weeks! I must update something here! Hahaha…

I’m in the process of memorising all the notes that I had written down.

For English paper, I have 4 pages of A4 size notes to memorise, more or less got it done, just need several revisions to refresh everything that I had memorised last week. Need to draft out my essay so that I can do it without wasting much time on that day since the topic is known already. It’s this Sunday!!! I think I can do well.

What I’m worry now is that it will get overwritten by my Math for Young Children notes. The exam is this Saturday, I have 11 pages of A4 notes to memorise. More or less OK but still not so confident because there are too many keywords and terms. I think I should be able to do well also… I hope so…

I want A for both!! *cross my fingers* I’ve never flunk my exam in college and uni, I seldom do badly also, so I hope I can keep my record hahaha…

Taking a break for the time being, nothing much to update. Exam will be coming on 2nd and 3rd of August, after that there’ll be a short break before the next semester begins. Might have random update if I have something.

Till then, it’s time to prepare for exam and make final adjustments to the second assignment of Mathematics for Young Children before passing it up on the coming Saturday.

Remember that my other blogs(Sweet Surrender, irenelaw.com) will still be updated everyday and at least once a week As if there’s anyone visiting this blog hehehe…

Math concept is accquired by applying social skill, science, mathematics and bridge language to the children. These can be divided into 3 types of learning experiences.

Naturalistic Learning Experience
This learning experience starts from birth to 2 years old. This is where the babies will be curious about things surrounding them. They will learn with their five senses namely touching, listening, smelling, looking, and tasting.

Informal Learning Experience
This learning experience starts from 2 years old to 7 years old. There is no need for a plan. The adult will just let the toddlers explore the things by themselves which is a naturalistic experience and watch over them. If they encounter a problem, the adult can offer help; or the toddlers is doing something, the adult can approach them by asking them questions and take the opportunity to teach them something new.

Structured Learning Experience
This learning experience starts from K1, K2 to primary school. Lesson or activity plans are prepared by the teacher to teach.
Step 1: Assess the level of knowledge the children have by asking them questions.
Step 2: Decide on the objective on what the children should achieve after the lesson or activity.
Step 3: Plan the experience by providing the environment and the method to teach.
Step 4: Prepare materials for teaching and ensure that the materials chosen are not dangerous.
Step 5: Start teaching.
Step 6: Evaluate whether the objective is met or not. If not, then the activity has to be re-planned.

There are 5 Math Concepts:

• Numeral: Create whole number operations, literature & mathematics, Symbolic level(number & quanity, parts & whole, number above 10 & place value ), operations with whole number using +,-,x, /
• Logical: Classifying, patterning and seriation
• Spatial Sense: Spatial relationship(distance, position, direction), spatial utilize, spatial perception(organization & pattern, construction)
• Geometry: Geometirc shapes, 3D geometric figures
• Measurements: Volume, weight, length, temperature

Assignment almost done. Should be able to print it out before Friday. Writing more than 1300 words about writting processes is not an easy task. Took me quite a hard time to make it reaches 1300 words.

Anyway, in class 4, we were given hints about the exam. If not mistaken exam would be on 3rd August 2008.

We learnt Coherence, unity and outlining in class 4. These will be out in exam!!

Coherence is one important element in a paragraph. A paragraph must be able to hold together by making sure that the movement of one sentence to another sentence is logical and smooth. There are 4 ways to do so:

• Repeating the key nouns
• Using consistent pronouns (do not change from you to she or to he, it must be the same throughout the paragraph)
• Transition signal (E.g. Next, Therefore, After that, First, Second, Third, In conclusion)
• Arrange your sentences in logical order, the common ones are chronological order, logical division of ideas, comparison/contrast

A good paragraph must have unity where only one topic should be discussed in one paragraph and outlining is a process that can help in planning for a paragraph.

We had our presentation for our first assignment today. Here are some photos. I had to blurred my coursemates’ faces to protect their identity hahaha… This is because only one or two know that I’m a blogger The rest don’t and I don’t want them to get shocked of the sudden fame for appearing in my blog/Internet without their consent.

Here you go… No photos of me because I can’t possibly take photo when I’m up there

This is my teaching materials that I had prepared.

Here are some actions of my coursemate:

Concept development is a process that explains the changes that take place in stages due to the growth and experience which is the building blocks of knowledge. This will allow people to organise and categorise information or solve a matter met during the different stages in life. Different children develop differently, they have their own pace. If they reach a certain stage one or two years later compare to those of their same age, it’s still considered within the normal range of development.

Following are Piagetian stages of concept development of children based on their age range:

• Sensorimotor(birth to 2 years old)
  Babies learn with their 5 senses, sight, touch, smell, taste and hearing. In addition, they also utilise their their motor abilities to learn basic skills and concepts such as:
  Observation, problem solving, one-to-one correspondence, number, shape, and spatial sense
• Preoperational(2-7 years old)
  Children develop concepts that are more like those of adults but still not complete in relation to what they will be like at maturity. Speech is used increasingly to express concept knowledge such as big and small, light and heavy etc.
  Fundamental concepts and skills: Sets and classifying, comparing, counting, parts and wholes, and language.
  Applied concepts and skills: Ordering, dseriation, patterning, informal measurement(weight, length, temperature, volume, time and sequence)
  Higher level concepts and skills: Number symbols, sets and symbols
• Transitional(5-7 years old)
  There would be two types of children, one type is the conserver and another type is non conserver. This is a critical stage where teachers must look out for to ensure that they have real understanding of what mathematical operations mean.
  Applied concepts and skills: Graphing(pie chart, height chart etc.)
  Higher level concepts and skills: Concrete addition and substraction
• Concrete operational(7-11 years old)
  They are able to retain original picture or object and making a mental reversal when appearance if a picture or object is changed.
  Primary concepts and skills: Whole number, operations, fractions, number facts, place value, geometry, measurement with standard units
• Formal operations(11 and above)
  Ability to learn scientific method independently, learn to solve problem in logical and systematic manner, understand abstract concepts, and attack abstract problems.

Piaget’s view of how children acquire knowledge is divided into 3 areas:

• Physical knowledge, learning about objects in environment and their characteristic(weight, height sise, texture or anything that can be determined through observation and are physically within the object).
• Logico-mathematical knowledge involves relationships each individual construct to make sense out of the world and to organise information.
• Social(conventional) knowledge is created by people such as rules of behaviours in various social situations.

Learning cycle of early childhood:

• Awareness: borad recognition of objects, events, people or concepts that develops from experience.
• Exploration: Construction of special meaning through sensory experiences with objects, peoples, events or concept.
• Inquiry: Learners compare their constructions with those of the culture, commonalities are recognized, generalisations are made that like those of adults.
• Utilization: Applying and using their undersanding in new settings and situations.