This section is where students demonstrate their acquired and growing skills, their ability to put theoretical/in class learning and discussion into practice and where they will demonstrate their professional skills as early childhood educators, colleagues, and contributing members of effective early years teams.
Headings Students will use the following headings to reflect and organize the learning they are demonstrating.
- Professional skills: Reliability, punctuality, communication skills, problem solving, contributions to team, initiative, reflective practice and ability to listen to and adapt practice based on constructive feedback, etc.
- Practical Skills: Responsive/Relational Care of young children, roles, duties, tasks etc.
Resources
To better understand and plan for building evidence in this section please refer to:
- BC Child Care Sector Competencies
- ECED 1200 Moodle Section: Professional Foundations
- ECED 1350 Moodle Section: Observation
- ECED 1330 Child Guidance
- CYCA 2500 Human Development Birth to Age 8
- ECED 1340 Interpersonal Communication
December 4th, 2024
Things I observed and picked up from today:
- Educators talk to the children like adults, not like how people talk to little children. They did not oversimplify or water it down for the children to understand it better.
ex) An educator told the children that were not really paying attention that, “Our expectations of you do not change”. - Children are very relaxed which may be they key reason of their well behavior
The environment is very calming, educators do not enforce a lot of work to the children that may cause stress.
Questions I had today:
- How do the lead educator regulate and refresh as it gets really overwhelming and stressful when taking care of so many children for a long period of time.
- Is there anything parents do that can support educators in taking care of the children?
December 5th, 2024
It seems gentle words actual does work when guiding children.
I always thought it was impossible to take care of children without having to raise your voice or being a bit strict however, these educators do not do those things but instead, they use soft and gentle words and tone of voice when talking to the children(which makes the children feel safe and comfortable) allowing them to listen and comply by choice without having to be forced.
December 6th, 2024
This career as an ECE is not too difficult if you have enough capacity to take make children’s business yours, be present with them, listen to them and care for them. In order to attain that level of space and capacity, one needs to take care of one’s needs and wants first, through self care, hobbies and others, to feel relaxed and having enough capacity to take care of others.
December 9th, 2024
Children aren’t too difficult to take care of. Understanding is key, [Relationship] .
When you know how a child reacts situation; like crying or hitting friends, (which may affect the whole room /environment) You will try to avoid “that thing” by shifting the child’s focus elsewhere(by distracting them, ask questions, suggest something new etc.).
A child was sad he lost the game and started to cry which led to aggressive tantrum which led to “I want my mommy”. When he got to this stage, there is pretty much nothing I could say for him to hear me so I asked him what he is having for lunch today(which calmed him a bit) then he said he doesn’t know so I asked if he knew what I was having. And I told him it’s a secret but i will tell him then I whispered “Chicken” into his ear. This totally distracted him from “I want me mommy”.
May not work for all children but we have to find out what works and what doesn’t when building a good relationship with the children.
December 10th, 2024
Saying No
When trying to be guidance professional, it can be hard to say no. You don’t want to be too restrictive, but You also done want to be walked upon. So how to be nice” and still be firm with your decisions?
→ Instead of saying “don’t do this !! ” or scolding in a scary manner, say things like “This is what we do” “We use inside voices”, things you actually want to see them doing not the other way around.
Because children do what they hear and sometimes they are so distracted they don’t hear the “don’t” but hear the rest. (By my mentor educator) – And also, telling then not to do something is not telling them what to at all (ECED 1320)
Kick-hand-base
I noticed a pattern in children’s play. Once I come into the yard, they ask to play hide and seek. One problem with that is there are no more places left to hide. So I decided it was probably time to introduce a new game. I taught the children how to play kick base but by hand, so more like hand base. This is pretty much baseball but without the complicated rules, bats, gloves or uniforms, only logs used as bases, a piece of bark, and 6 children grouped into 2 teams.
Rules:
Group A starts from home base while Group B starts from within the court.
When the first player in group A throws the stick into the court, Group B’s mission is to prevent group A from getting back to home base, get the stick and bring it to home base, while Group A runs through all 3 bases back to home base.
The rules were simple yet may have been a bit challenging for children ages 3-5 to quickly get the hang of but we kept trying to figure out way to understand better.
When we played this game the first time, the children seemed to like it but had little understanding of how the game worked which was why half of the game was me explaining and re-explaining from time to time. Soon, they started to understand the part where they have to bring the stick back and run through all the bases.
The next day, a few children came to ask if we could play this game again and I was a bit surprised as I never expected them to come back to want to play this game because I felt them not fully understanding the game would prevent them from enjoying it. This time, the game went a bit smoother as the children remembered the rules from the previous day and even more friends decided to join. When we first started the game (the first day), we had 2 friends on each team making 4 friends in total however, this time we had 4 friends on each team making 8 friends in total.
I honestly do not think we went anywhere with this game yet but I was glad to be able to introduce something new to them
Learning how to balance
We ran and played tag and race all morning and unlike the children, I was feeling out of energy so I suggested to them that we played a calmer game. There are some logs and stumps lying in the daycare yard which we once played statue on. One of the friends remembered this game we played previously and suggested that was what we should play. Statue is a game where one person stands on this log or stump and stays still like statues. If they move, the next person gets a turn. We played this for a while and I decided to be a balancing statue standing on one foot with my arms in the air. That was when one of the friends askd, “can you teach me how to do that?” This question led to us transitioning from playing statue to learning how to balance on logs. The log we played statue on was very flat which made it very easy to balance however, it was a bit too high for the children to climb up by themselves. There was a shorter log laid side ways nearby which was a bit difficult to balance but we dicided we would learn how to balance on that instead.
The first few tries were not a pleasant one for the child as she kept falling off even though I was holding her hands. Never the less, she insisted on trying again and again even after falling about 10 times. Soon, I started to get worried because I did not want her to get hurt or injured, but at the same time, I did not want her to stop trying just because of my fear of her falling.
On about the 15th try, she started to be able to balance on her own without my support for about 5 seconds. It gradually increased to 8, 10, then by the end of play time that day she was able to balance for 20 seconds without support and without falling! I learned the resilience of children, how we as educators often let our fears get in the way of children trying something new, but one thing I still would like to learn more about is how to balance risky play with safety.
Let’s make a fort!
It was a cloudy day and children were in the yard figuring out what to play when they noticed big cardboard pieces from opened packages laying on the ground.