Self -concept can be defined as the child’s growing awareness of his or her own characteristics(physical appearance, skills, and abilities) and how these are similar or different from those of others.
Children like to feel good about themselves to develop self-acceptance/self-esteem. They will do things well and have good sense of self-acceptance to accept their strength and limitation. Art and craft activities can help develop sense of self-acceptance. The program must be child-centered.
When the child is able to accept himself, he will be able to accept other children
Encourage self-acceptance through art:
- Accept children at their present developmental level
- Provide an environment that is comfortable for the age level of the group
- Provide materials and activities that are age appropriate
- Provide creative materialss and activities that the child can work and complete by themselves
Expression of thoughts:
- art acitivities provide endless opportunities for a child to learn how other children feel about things
- experience ideas and feelings of an age-mate
- exciting things for a child, it can also be hard for some children to accept it at first
- learn to accept and share ideas
- they will learn that people can have different feelings and ideas can still be friends, this will develop child-to-child relationship
Expression if feelings:
- translate personal feelings as well as ideas
- emotional catharsis
- usage of colours and size or placement of representation often reflect healthy emotions which are difficult to express in words
Child-to-teacher relationship:
- teacher is important person in the child’s eyes
- take their teacher seriously
- learns new ways to be with an adult in the early childhood program
- opens up new type of relationship as teacher is an adult that is not the child’s parents
- learns how to share an adult attention with other children
- teacher helps the child discover himself through art
- teacher helps them feel safe to be themselves and express their ideas in their own way
Child-to-group relationship:
- learn to be in a group and it’s not the same as being in a family
- learn about following rules and instructions
- learn how to share and cooperate
- discover their leadership potential
- learn about advantages and disadvantages of being in a group
- learning to respect others
- learn about being members of a group in school can help them as members of social group outside the school
- learn self-discipline
- resolve interpersonal conflicts
Art activities develop both large and small muscles.
Large motor development:
- large muscles in the arms, legs, neck, and trunk develop first
- by the time the child reaches preschool, he will be able to use large muscles quite well
- painting with a brush on a large piece of paper is good practice
- only first developing large muscles that a child can begin to develop small motor skills
Small motor development:
- small muscles in fingers, hands, and wrist are used in art activities such as painting, cutting, pasting, and clay modeling
- small muscle exercise develops fine motor control
- can grow stronger only by practice and exercise
Hand-eye coordination:
- ability to use hand(s) and eyes at the same time
- important for future school work
- it is believed that good hand-eye coordination helps a child learns to read because he needs to hold a book with both hands and using eyes to read from left-right
Focus on the development of creative and expressive attitude through imagination and thinking.
Active involvement in various art activities such as drawing, craft, music, singing, drama and poem enable student to reveal themselves and express their ideas. It is important as it can help student develops self-esteem and understanding of their own choices.
The 5 aspects in the component:
- Environment and beauty of nature
- Painting and craft
- Music, singing, and creative movement
- Drama and poem
- Cultural heritage
Bring students to explore, obseve, recognize and enjoy the beauty of nature.
Give opportunities to express feeling and develop creative skills by drawing, crafting, music, singing, creative movement, poem and drama.
Active involvement can encourage student’s cognitive, affection and psychomotor development and foster aesthetical value. Also expose students to songs, music, games, crafts and traditional equipment in order for them to recognize and appreciate culture heritage of various races in Malaysia.
What is art?
Part of everyday life
As a trim, seen as nonessential or elitist
Valuable commodity
Visual communication through elements of color, line, shapre, and texture instead of words
Why is art important for young children?
A child’s art belongs to the child
No adult interpretation or descriptions can, or should, describe what a child has created
Part of child’s own process of communication and creativity
The first mark made with a crayon, dips a brush into paint or glued coloured circles onto the paper is the birth of a creative process
Child freely experience the sheer pleasure of getting to know himself in a new way, self-expression
Fundamental growth of a child
Integration of many skills and basic experiences
Hehehe… Classes started already but I’m so lazy to update my notes here.
My class is every Tuesday morning and Sunday afternoon. Missed one Tuesday class last week because I was in Singapore having fun ;p
Now I’m back and I’m not motivated to update yet.
We’ll see how by then.
No semester break. Class will start this Sunday. I’m exempted from taking the Saturday’s class. So in other words, I will be having only Sunday classes for the coming semesters until this year end.
I decided to take up one subject from the full time class so that I can at least complete one more subject and might be able to shorten the course for maybe one semester.
If on normal circumstances, we will be doing 2 subjects each semester but not these two coming semesters due to the Saturday classes. For my case, it means I will only be doing 1 subject per semester. At least by taking this one subject from full time class, I’m doing 3 subjects in 2 semesters.
Full time class has more hours of class and more number of classes. I heard the teaching is using dual language -.-” I hope I’m not bored by then *LOL* I’ve been so used of doing distant/supported/electronic learning, lots of flexibility. Now, once a week, I have to adjust to full time student mode. It’s been a long long time no being a full-time student.
However, I will be missing the first class next week as I’ll be away.
Oh well… Don’t care… So long I got to take another subject and shorten my course since I’m exempted from 3 subjects.
Exam in less than one week time!
Busy studying, lots and lots of thing to study -.-” Lots of theories, I hate theories. Still have to study and lots of memorizing are required.
No semester break this semester, class will start the coming weekend after exam.
I’ve been in the course for one year already. Time sure flies…
Ethical of social reform: Expectation that education and schooling for young children have the potential for significant social change and improvement.
- Child care
- Quality and cost
- National crisis
- Education reform
- No child left behind
- Reform issues and strategies
Issues:
- Endangered childhood, stress level is getting higher nowadays and children do not have safe place to go without worrying of getting harm.
- Child abuse and neglect
- Children with AIDS
- Poverty
- Family support
Values Transmission:
- TV and other media culture
- Violence and disaster
- Diversity
OMG! I wanted to delete spam and then accidentally deleted about 20 others non-spam comments! 20 over latest comments gone… So sorry.
As for Mark, I’m so so so sorry, I replied and now the comments are gone. However, here’s my reply to you for your latest comment:
Mark, only if I have the mood I will update this blog with my notes ;p
In fact I have a job now and I’m doing this part time so it really doesn’t matter much unless I loss this job then maybe venture into this field since computer/IT skill now is one skill that many young children must master. So you can see that it supplements current qualification. 
Why as competitor hahaha… Just doing this for fun and one very important thing in this field is to interact with each other more to learn new skill and share.
Go ahead and post as much you like ;p
Phonics – the relationship between the letters of written language and the sounds of spoken language
Phonemes – smallest units of speech
Phonics is a method of teaching speakers of English to read and write that language.
Phonological awareness:
- teach children to attend to and manipulate speech sounds in words
- effective under a variety of teaching conditions and with a variety of learners
- teaching sounds in language helps the children to learn to read
- decode novel words, remember and read familiar words
- boost reading comprehension
- learn to spell
- instructions should be suitable for child’s developmental level
- teach in small group and bits by bits
- aware that alphabet letters is important
- blend phonemes
- important to lean letter shapes, sounds, and names
- let them know the importance of phonics in their life
- instructions does not need to consume long periods of time to be effective
- computer can be used
- understand and use alphabetic system to read and write
- critical foundation piece
- short and as relevant as possible
- cannot guarantee later literacy success
Phonemic awareness training exercise:
- directing children’s attention to rhyme
- segmenting morphemes and syllables
- categorizing sounds
- identify syllables
- illustrating phonemic contrasts
- experience relevant articulatory gestures
- using segmentation and identification games at the phonemic level
Different phonics approaches:
- Synthetic phonics
- Analytical phonics
- Analogy phonics
