International Contact

My conversation partner is Eric Atmore. He is the Director at the Centre for Early Childhood Development in South Africa. The Centre for Early Childhood Development is committed to putting young children first by ensuring quality care and education for our country’s youngest and most vulnerable citizens. Mr. Atmore responded to my email quickly when I first was seeking out an international contact. He said he would help me in whatever capacity I needed. The most important part was he said he would be happy to assist in whatever way I needed. This made me feel good because I knew I had someone who had a passion for the Early Childhood field because he was willing to help someone coming up from the ranks wanting to learn more.
The most interesting thing Mr. Atmore has shown me is their program called Little Village Early Learning Programme. This is where the Centre has developed a programme of Literacy, Numeracy and Life Skills for children ages 5-9. This is some tidbits about Little Villiage from the website:
# The Little Village characters are colourful comic puppets. They do not represent any race, religion or group. Little Village is a place that could be found anywhere in South Africa.
# The characters in Little Village promote our belief that learning must be fun. Each edition of Little Village is validated for ECD suitability by ECD specialists at the Centre for Early Childhood Development.
# Educational material is often too expensive for families in the lower LSM brackets. Little Village is cost-effective to print as it doesn’t require glossy paper or fancy binding. An additional benefit of this is that the booklets are designed to be well-used by young children. Each booklet includes at least three age-appropriate activities. The booklet doubles up as a workbook and a story book.
# The Little Village Activity Booklet is designed to be used by teachers in the classroom; however, teachers are encouraged to send the booklets home with their children to encourage parent-child interaction.
# The Little Village Activity Booklet can be translated and printed in any of the eleven official languages to ensure mother-tongue instruction for young children.
# Jincom Publishing and CECD plan to create a radio and television broadcast of Little Village to encourage learning through popular mediums.

One thing that I have learned about poverty from Mr. Atmore for South Africa is that you have to meet people where they are at to really help them. It made me feel like there was a Head Start in South Africa. Where we go out and do home visits with the families, this center actually goes out to the villages and works with the groups of children together. It reminds me of our Home Based program for Head Start. Its a combination of literacy and life skills as well as medical. The Little Village program includes hygiene which is not a primary topic for Head Start but we do touch on Hand Washing and make sure the children brush their teeth. It was great to learn that we approach poverty in some of the same ways. Meeting them where they are at because they can't get to us is one important factor. Also, making the families realize the importance of Literacy and an education is another approach that we use. If the parents realize the importance, then the child has a stronger web of support. This child getting an education and being successful could be the key not only to his family of getting out of poverty, but in South Africa a whole village's key to getting out of poverty and/or improving living conditions. This is so exciting! I really want to go to South Africa now, just to visit this Centre and learn more about Little Village.

Sharing Web Resources

The organization I chose is The National Association for the Education of Young Children
www.naeyc.org
My favorite part is Next. That is a collection of study guides to go with Young Children. Young Children is an award-winning, peer-reviewed professional journal published bimonthly by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. Young Children issues are organized around topical clusters that devote special attention to issues in the field of early childhood education. Next for Young Children suggest ways to build on the content of selected articles from Young Children. I like that because we can use articles for staff training and professional development. The site also has upcoming trainings in different locations listed. One other thing I found helpful was that you could join the organization online. The website has this posted:
NAEYC members can receive this award-winning journal (Young Children) for free six times a year as one of their membership benefits. Ninety-three percent of a survey sample of independent members named Young Children “the most useful NAEYC benefit in their work as early childhood professionals.” I think this organization is a great resource for us all.

Expanding Resources

I have to admit I was a little nervous about this assignment. I was afraid of being able to communicate with people outside the United States because of language barriers. I did however choose to make contact with someone in South Africa. I emailed two people. One at the UNICEF in South Africa and the other was at an Early Childhood Conference in South Africa. I will post something as soon as I hear from them. I am excited now about what I could possibly learn! I am no longer nervous just hoping to hear back soon. I am so excited!

I chose to use The National Association for the Education of Young Children
www.naeyc.org website for exploring. I like it because they have so much information from all over. I really am looking forward to getting information from them. I especially like that they have different trainings that are offered listed on their site for a variety of different issues. This is going to be great!

My supports

I would have to say my first support would be God. Without him, I couldn't make it through the day. The support of prayer and my personal relationship with God gives me hope when the day is rough.

Second, support of Family is very essential to me. I have my parents to help me when I need them, my husband to help me with the children and household things.

Third the support of my pastor. I am fortunate enough to see him for a few minutes each weekday and then on Sundays because he is a bus driver at our school. If I have a problem or the day has been tough, he will give an encouraging word and I am re-energized.

Fourth, I have the support of my teachers and teacher assistants. They help me stay in touch with my families. I cannot be at both schools at one time, so I need their help to get information back and forth between the parents and myself.

The benefits of these supports are that I don't have to be a hundred people. I have lots of people to help me cope, to encourage me, and to share the work load. It is a benefit because I won't go crazy trying to do it all myself. It would be extremely difficult for me to make it through the day without these supports. I need each of these things to function. They all play an important role in the success and productivity of my day. If I lost these supports my life would be haywire. I definitely need this support system because of my busy life. Family is so important as is God and my spirituality. Without God, I could do nothing, he is my everything. If my family was gone I would have to give up my job because i could not afford a babysitter for all the after hours events my job requires and for the crisis situations that arise at any time. It would be detrimental to have these supports removed from my life.
My imagined challenge is completing my Master's without my Family or Pastor. If I had to do this, I would need to physical support to be able to do homework with he kids around. I would need someone to watch them when I need to read lengthy assignments. I would need someone to get the kids off the bus in the evening, put them on the bus in the morning, and cook for them. There are so many supports that I would need physically and emotionally. I need encouragement. Sometimes I feel as if I want to stop because it's too hard but someone will come along and say something to give me a boost and I keep pressing on.
All of these things are important to me. It would be difficult to survive without them and I truly am thankful for them. I try not to forget what a blessing they are to me, or take them for granted. I remember to thank these people and let them know that they are important to me. Even if it is just a little note to say I care. The loss of these things would be a great impact on my life and would cause me to have to change alot of things.

My Connections to Play

I value play as am important medium for learning. I feel that that is how I learned to do many things.

Whoever wants to understand much must play much.

Gottfried Benn
German physician
1886–1956

Play gives children a chance to practice what they are learning.

Fred Rogers
American television personality
1928–2003

I had many aunts who supported my play as a child. We could not go many places as children because my mom and dad had four of us. It was costly to go to movies and things like that because my family only had one income. My aunts would take me to different places, such as the park, or playground. We would swing and run and do many things that taught me through experience. One of my aunts was a teacher and she would always bring blocks or books or something and I would read with her. I would have the blocks that had numbers and a set that had letters and we would play with them. I would learn number concepts or problem solve when I would try to stack them. I could just go on and on about the different things that I learned from playing. That is why I feel this quote is so personal for me.

Children need the freedom and time to play. Play is not a luxury. Play is a necessity.

Kay Redfield Jamison
Contemporary American professor of psychiatry

Today's play to me is better than what it was when I was a child, because we have learned so much about how play benefits children. Toys have been developed to foster that learning in more ways than what it used to be. Now that stuffed doll may sing ABC's or that toy fire truck may flash lights and be more realistic. I think since we know more about learning through play than when I was a child, it has improved the way children play.

This was one of my favorite toys. I think I liked it so much because it was family and all the components were there. There was even the dog. The car was in the little garage and I had so much fun with it. I think it taught me about family and gave me a since of love for spending time together. I wish i could buy this somewhere now for my daughter. I hope she will value the time she spends with us as she grows like I did with my parents.

Play was so important to me as a child. I loved to play with other people more than being alone. I longed to have other children come to my house and spend the night or come over and spend the day with me. I loved to be outside and ride my bike. I oved playing kickball and choosing teams and team captains. I'm so glad we did this assignment. It brought back so many memories and has warmed my heart.

Quote about children

A quote about children

Working with children may not make you rich financially, but it has enormous benefits to your soul-Chinese Fortune

I received this while dining at Chinamen's Buffet in Colonial Heights, Virginia in January of 2007

Testing for Intelligence

As a Head Start employee, I believe 100% in testing a child holistically. I also believe that we have to develop holistically as well. I think we need to have as much knowledge about a child's emotional health as well as cognitive abilities. When we talked about stressors for children previously, that gave us examples right there of the many things that can affect a child's cognitive abilities. We as adults must think about when we are going through some type of stress, are we really able to focus? Are we thinking about what particular thing is bothering us or concentrating on the workshop we are in or a training that we are sitting in? Kids have that same problem. It's hard to focus if you're thinking about the fact that last night the police burst into your home and took your mom to jail. Therefore, I think emotional assessments are very necessary. I looked into assessments in Australia and found that Primary school is for children ages 5-12 and children are assessed beginning at age 7 with a NAPLAN test. I also found a program called Reach for the Stars that does assessment of children for the schools. The tests Reach for the Stars will perform are: Sensory, Developmental, Social Emotional, Motor, Participation Assessments, and Adaptive behavior/cognition assessments. Most of these are self explanatory, but I wondered about the participation assessment so I dug deeper and found this is a school function assessment that evaluates and monitors a students performance of functional tasks and activities at school. The adaptive behavior assessments is a test that assesses disorders of planning, organization and problem solving. This test is assessed beginning at age 16. I hope that I never have to take that test. I will flunk out for sure! I am so unorganized!

www.psychcorp.com.au/otguide
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_school#Australia