Archive for November, 2008

6
Nov

6 Elements of Movements

   Posted by: admin   in Announcements

  1. Movement
    Personal space: Involves immediate area surrounding the body.
    General space: Limited by the floor, wall, or ceiling.
    There are 3 levels: Standing upright/high level, Middle level, Low level
    Sample activity: Pose questions and challenges e.g Imagine you are in a bubble, move around in the bubble.
  2. Shape
    Relates to various body parts.
    Sample activity: Mirror game
  3. Time
    Relates to how slowly or quickly a movement is performed.
    Sample activity: Crawl like a turtle
  4. Force
    Relates to how strongly or lightly a movement is performed.
    Sample activity: Float like a feather.
  5. Flow
    Free flow(uninterrupted): e.g. Eagle soaring in the sky
    Bound flow(punctuated or halting): e.g. Hop-hop-stop. hop-hop-stop
  6. Rhythm
    Associates with elelment of time.
    Sample activity: Say name out loud and clap by following the syllable.

Physical Domain
Children automatically acquire some motoskills when their bodies develop e.g crawling but the children continue to develop the motor skills to refine their movement.

The advantages of movement:
- Promote positive self confidence
- Benefit the child socially, emotionally and physically
- Promote fitness

Movement activities must take place in both classroom and playground. They must be low-intensity but high volume(long duration).

Sample activities: Rabbit & ‘Roo, marching with the beat, Giddy-up

Social/Emotional Domain
- Social play, the ability of the children to interact with others.
- Emotional development, how children feel about others or things (empathy)
- Enable the children to adjust socially and emotionally

How?
Incorporate activities specifically emphasizing cooperation.

    Learn about tolerance of other’s ideas
    Learn to accept similarities and differences

Balance between child-centered and teacher-centered activity
Have creative, problem-solving approach

Sample activities: poems/songs about animals(Old McDonald has a Farm), nature activities(weather), occupation(pantomime)

Cognitive Domain
Read: 10%
Hear: 20%
See: 30%
Hear+See: 50%
Hear+See+Say: 70%
Hear+See+Say+Do: 90%

Children must play, experience, explore and discover. The 4 important modalities are:

  • Auditory(Hear)
  • Sight(See)
  • Tactile(Touch)
  • Kinesthetics(Doing & Moving)

Sample activities (more suitable for older group): up and down activities, Bridge+Tunnels, Body Parts

3
Nov

Children’s Rights

   Posted by: admin   in The Child, Family and Society

Children are:-
- young human beings
- small human beings
- below 18 (depending on different country)

Rights are:-
Legal and moral entitlement of human being for exmaple, voting, education, medical, religion… When too many rights are given away, the rights will devalued.

Right holders are:-
People with rights.

Privileges are:-
Benefit given to certain people, some are given and some don’t based on certain criterias. It can be stripped off anytime.

Do children have rights?
There’s two answers for this, YES and NO. It is something people kept debating about especially when it comes to legal and moral issues regarding children.

No matter what, children have the rights to have their “best interest” be a primary consideration in all actions concerning them. Adult’s duty is to protect the important interest of the children. Both rights and duties are correlative.

No: Children cannot make their own decision because they have not enough knowledge or unable to voice out what they want especially babies.

Yes: They are human beings. They have the right to grow up, to be heard, given benefits and privileges to protect their interest so that they can grow up properly.

There are also arguments such as human beings are right holders; if they are not right holders, they are not human beings.

Positive rights
Rights considered as positive rights may have include other civil and political rights such as police protection of person and property and the right to counsel, as well as economic, social and culturals rights such as public education, heatlh care, social security, and a minimum standard if living. A positive right is a right to be provided with something through the action of another person or the state.

Moral rights
Based on religious/cultural concept of morality. The most popular one would be the abortion issue.

Both positive and moral rights are at odds with each other and the debates continue.

Will/Choice Theory
Sees a right as the protected exercise of choice.
E.g Right to education
“Have the option of enforcing the duty of some other person to provide me with an education or discharge them from the responsibility of doing so”

Welfare/Interest Theory
As the protection of an interest of sufficient importance to impose on others certain duties whose discharge allows the right-holder to enjoy the interest in question.
E.g. Right to education
“Is for me to have an interest in being educated which is so important that others are under an enforceable duty to provide me with an education”

“that others”
Are people or entity that provide the services such as doctors/hospital and teachers/school.