The Importance of Early Childhood Behavior
Early childhood behavior is crucial for the future personality of the child (Whitebeard, D., 2015). What a child can become in future is depicted during his or her early stages of growth in life. This can be determined through observing how the child behaves when undertaking some specific tasks occasionally especially when the task is repetitive. With the help of a guardian a child can realize his or her talents and abilities which might determine his or her area of specialization later in life. Pursuing teaching as a profession, it is a part of study to be placed at a learning center so as to gain practical knowledge of how things happen literally and for that matter i have been placed at a kindergarten and doing an activity been essential, i have chosen a doll washing activity for my focus child who is Kirat and she is 4 years old who is the basis for my assignment. This assignment seeks to relate the skills depicted by Kirat in her doll washing activity with the Early Years Learning and Development end results.
My focus child is Kirat who is four years old and she studies in the Kindergarten where I have been placed to gain practical experience in teaching. She has been in the kindergarten for 5 months. One day I observed her playing with dolls .I was surprised by how she treated the dolls as though she was handling a real child. She covered the dolls with her warm sweater and sang a lullaby to curdle them to sleep like the mother does to her child. I just knew that she is doing what she has seen at home or might have learn while playing with other kids(Oke, I., Kulkarni, P., Lolap, T. and Haribhakta, Y., 2016). This observation enabled me to come into a conclusion that during the early childhood period children learn most of the activities through observation of what happens in their environment and they also learn through interaction with others in the course of playing drama as mum does at home
On another day, I noticed Kirat enjoyed visiting the baby’s corner setup with the dolls and various materials which is usually set for kids at the kindergarten as playing toys during their free time. She sat down and gently covered the babies with a blanket while pattering them at the same time to sleep. Some two other kids came and asked her if she could join them to play outside the class but she refused claiming that her kids would cry. I was fascinated by her determination and her seriousness in her task, indeed she was so passionate in what she was doing and disturbance was the last thing she would allow. Some kids came to where her dolls were sleeping and they started to sing and jump and she requested them to be silent lest they awake her children and the kids left and went to play outside the classroom. I was surprised by her nature of been considerate and caring to her dolls and that is what happens exactly in real life when someone makes noise where a child is sleeping. From this I was able to conclude that children learn through experiments of what they might have seen or heard within their environment (May, R.J., Downs, R., Marchant, A. and Dymond, S., 2016).
Observing Kirat’s Behavior
I noted in another occasion I noted that she had some juice in a bottle and she tried to spoon feed her doll through its tiny mouth. I was surprised by how she was able to determine whether the doll was consuming the juice or not and I asked her how the juice will enter the doll’s stomach and she told me that she had made a small hole at its artificial mouth where she was dripping the juice using her small plastic spoon and to my surprise the juice was over after some minutes and she told me that the doll was now full and the next thing was to curdle it to sleep. I was really impressed by her creativity and knowledge from how she performed the whole process of feeding her doll. I was able to conclude that children can be creative so as to satisfy their predetermined outcomes of the activities they do engage in
From the above discussed documentation Kirat undertook a process of internalization and experimentation from the way she handled the dolls like a mother handling her child. Kirat has learned dolls should be fed like the mother feeds her child , she has learned that children who are sleeping can be interrupted by noise and she has also learned that her dolls need attention and should not be disserted She has learned all these through observation, socializing and listening. As seen documentations above, Kirat has demonstrated the following skills; intellectual skill through remembering all the concepts, listening skills through application of what she might have learned from her immediate environment and persistence skills by not joining other children to play and rather staying to watch over her dolls. (Mazur, J.E., 2016). She has also learned to determine whether the doll is full by having a unique amount of food for its doll and by completion of the food she concludes that the doll is satisfied which is the exact thing that mothers do in real life experience.
Due to her great interest in dolls I had to come up with a plan to teach her a new activity which would improve on her already observed knowledge (Arthur, L., Beecher, B., Death, E., Dockett, S. and Farmer, S., 2017). I evaluated everything she knew and discovered that she knew how to; patter the doll to sleep, feed the doll, dress the doll, impress the doll through singing some lullaby for it to sleep but there is one thing I never saw her doing, washing the doll. This gave me an idea of the need to introduce the doll washing activity since I wanted to teach her that hygiene is also crucial for her doll. This is because creation of awareness to the child about the significance of hygiene from a tender age is very important for her present and future development (Harms, T., Clifford, R.M. and Cryer, D., 2014). Furthermore, early childhood activities like the washing activity will increase the concurrent development of the cognitive skills in a child as she develops. A child who loves hygienity from a tender age will keep the same trend in her future adult life (David, T. ed., 1999). As a teacher I had to come up with a teaching strategy that will enable her to learn the doll washing process. I had also to seek the resources that will facilitate the learning process. I bought a manila paper and drew the diagrams illustrating the whole process from the beginning to the end. I indicated the process using the arrows where the head indicated the next step. The process began with sub merging the dolls in a water tub, applying soap on it, rinsing the doll with water, wiping it dry using a towel and laying the doll in the sun to dry. That was the teaching strategy that I used and the teaching resources were the Manila paper, water, soap and towel.
Skills Kirat Demonstrated
The new activity of doll washing was implemented with Kirat and three other children at the kindergarten. With the diagrams and my explanation they were able to follow all the steps and I was impressed by their sharpness in understanding. They would all wash them as per my instructions and Kirat indeed found the activity to be really interesting and all the children together with Kirat picked up a baby doll each and placed it in the tub. They dipped the towel in the tub and wanted to know whether if they knew whatever they were doing and Kirat responded while still concentrating on washing the doll by saying that she was using the towel to wash the doll. I was keen to observe her and she proceeded to place the dolls hair in water and grabbed some soap in her hands then I requested to know what she purposed with the soap and she answered that she was using the soap to wash the dolls hair. I requested to know why she was washing the doll and she said that the dolls were dirty and smelly (David, T. ed., 1999). I asked her about the duration she was going to take to clean the dolls and she said that was going to wash the dolls until they were clean. After ensuring that the dolls were clean they laid them off to dry and after placing the baby dolls on the chair they all went to play the different activities
I have discovered that having a reflection of the whole process is of significance for initiating a learning culture in Kirat. The overall process of my work with Kirat presents an example of how planning, assessment and documentations contributed to her learning (Hwang, W.Y., Liu, Y.F., Chen, H.R., Huang, J.W. and Li, J.Y., 2015). It is my belief that my thorough planning, systematic demonstration, proper assessment and evaluation have facilitated learning for Kirat. I have tried to collect data, comments and the perception of Kirat and the three children concerning the new activity and had used it for decision making. During the implementation of the new activity I outsourced some labor from my fellow teacher at the kindergarten to manage all the other kids that worked with Kirat, because cooperation with other kids helped to create an inclusive environment for Kirat that would enhance her learning process. I have done a thorough research and conducted various brain storming sessions through several early childhood frameworks this has enabled me to adopt an expert way of teaching the children in the kindergarten. I have confidence that my teaching strategies have facilitated the learning capabilities of Kirat. After the new activity, I found out that Kirat was showing more interest in her dolls and each day she washed them and she did it perfectly. Her awareness regarding the hygiene of her dolls has increased. I was also successful in identifying some of the areas of improvement in terms of her learning. I concluded that during evaluation of the child learning process one has to be more careful. During the doll washing activity I neither gave her the duration for washing nor pressured and I never inquired from her whether she is enjoying the activity or she was doing as a norm but from her behavioral pattern I concluded that she was indeed happy with the new activity and as a teacher I was able to achieve my objective for studying my focus child and her learning behavior.
References
Arthur, L., Beecher, B., Death, E., Dockett, S. and Farmer, S., 2017. Programming and Planning in Early Childhood Settings with Student Resource Access 12 Months. Cengage AU.
Mazur, J.E., 2016. Learning & behavior. Routledge.
Oke, I., Kulkarni, P., Lolap, T. and Haribhakta, Y., 2016, December. Adaptive Learning System for Analysis of Performance and Learning Behavior of School Children. In Technology for Education (T4E), 2016 IEEE Eighth International Conference on (pp. 238-239). IEEE.
May, R.J., Downs, R., Marchant, A. and Dymond, S., 2016. Emergent verbal behavior in preschool children learning a second language. Journal of applied behavior analysis, 49(3), pp.711-716.
Hwang, W.Y., Liu, Y.F., Chen, H.R., Huang, J.W. and Li, J.Y., 2015. Role of Parents and Annotation Sharing in Children’s Learning Behavior and Achievement using E-Readers. Educational Technology & Society, 18(1), pp.292-307.
Whitebread, D., 2015. Introduction: young children learning and early years teaching. In Teaching and learning in the early years (pp. 27-48). Routledge.
David, T. ed., 1999. Young children learning. SAGE.
Harms, T., Clifford, R.M. and Cryer, D., 2014. Early childhood environment rating scale. Teachers College Press.
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