Happy October, Delaware Child Development Center families!
This month I would like to share with you a little bit about successful learning. Quality Early Childhood Education provides children with a crucial element to enduring successful education and real-life skills. Delaware Child Development Center teachers’ goal is to learn each child’s style of learning and individualize the classroom lesson plans according to the children’s current interest.
Teachers are continuously collecting data through observations and activities. They take that information and input it in the program Teaching Strategies Gold (TSG). TSG defines itself as “a seamless system for assessing children from birth through kindergarten. Extensive field tests have shown it to be both valid and reliable. Available online and in print, the system can be used with any developmentally appropriate early childhood curriculum.” Once teachers enter the observation data into the TSG system, they can run a report and see where the children in their classroom are in their development and provide age-appropriate activities for successful lessons with measurable results.
Studies have concluded that a huge component in a child’s social development starts with emotional cognitive early learning. Emotional cognitive social early learning helps children to manage emotions, which builds the child’s confidence. During the early childhood years, emotional experiences shape the brain. Thus, it’s imperative to nurture the child’s imagination and development. Our teachers are trained to teach emotional cognitive early learning by example, helping children to identify their own feelings and respond to them. The skill of understanding and accepting their own feelings starts to develop, and then healthy relationships with their peers are formed organically. At about one year of age, children begin to understand how their own actions affect others’ emotions. Friendships start to form.
DCDC Bartlesville provides children with a classroom learning environment, incorporating appropriate techniques modeled by our Early Childhood professionals. Teachers build their own learning environments that meet the needs of the students in their class. They know what materials to provide according to the children’s behaviors. For example, interest areas like dramatic play can be transformed into a restaurant or post office with just a teacher’s imagination and a few props! A restaurant in the classroom could help kick start a child’s imagination and foster a learning experience on many levels, such as manners, writing skills, and social environments.
You’re probably wondering how you can adopt some of our classroom social and emotional learning at home. You can do this by understanding your child’s individual learning style, modeling healthy emotional responses in front of your child, and talking to your child’s teacher about how he or she responds in a group setting.
Tina McClintic
Director
