The Canadian Childcare Federation has an impressive amount of journals, It was hard for me to just pick three as I found that they all had the information I found to be interesting and important. After browsing through the list of journals, I choose to focus on these Professional Journals, Developmentally Appropriate Practices in School-Age Child Care, Practitioners, and Families Together: Encouraging Positive Behaviour and Exploring Nature with Children. These three articles cover important key aspects that I myself are learning and practicing while working in a daycare. The first journal I looked at was: # 23, Number 1, 2001, Developmentally Appropriate Practices in School-Age Child Care written by Jennifer Murphy-Hupé. This topic comes up a lot in my workplace, what is and is not appropriate for the children we look after, and at what age. Jennifer focuses on two aspects: age-appropriateness and individual appropriateness. Age-appropriateness focuses on the age of the child and what other children are saying, doing, and how they are expressing themself at that age. It is based on a group mentality well taken into consideration that it needs to be challenging and interesting while not being held back by barriers like culture and language. Individual appropriateness focuses on the uniqueness of the child, how the child learns and understands in their own individual patterns. Taking into consideration learning styles and family backgrounds. Though this article was short I still feel like Jennifer had some important takeaways like the best way for a child to learn is when they construct their own knowledge and develop new skills, Thus helping the child grow.  I find reading this article gave me a way more confident approach to my decision when communicating with My co-workers on this topic. We all express our love for the children and how we want to help them grow but I personally think sometimes loose that you need to look at both age and individual, The information from this article will better help me understand the difference between Age-appropriateness and Individual appropriateness so I can better help the children who may be struggling or falling behind. 

 

The second journal by the Canadian Childcare Federation I would like to focus on is Volume 22, Number 1, Spring 2008, Practitioners and Families Together: Encouraging Positive Behaviour written by Carole Massing. This article focuses on the importance of practitioners and parents working together to find the best fit for the child. Whether it be better communication, challenging behaviors, or helping to achieve the child’s goals. Practitioners have an important role to play in children’s and families’ lives. The author focuses on how It is important for both parents and practitioners to have open and clear communication. The author also breaks down the steps in helping to resolve whatever type of conflict you may encounter. Sometimes practitioners can give better observation or understanding when it comes to a child who might be experiencing difficulties.

 Practitioners and families both share children’s social successes. Sometimes working together to address a challenging behavior can be stressful for a practitioner as they don’t want to upset the parents or cause them to become defensive. It can be hard to address an issue without starting a conflict. It is the practitioner’s responsibility to address the behavioral issues in a calm clear way. However, while not feeling bad because it’s their job. Carole gives good examples/suggestions on how to have these conversations in an appropriate professional way. Some of these examples are building a good relationship by actively listening to the parent, establishing mutual trust, and acknowledging goals or feeling the parents might have. I found this article to be very informative. Carole gives very good examples that I myself are for sure going to be using more. Since I’ve started working in a daycare I’ve seen many times where my supervisor is talking to a parent and the parent doesn’t understand or my supervisor doesn’t explain something properly and the parent gets upset or defensive. I personally think that anyone who is working with kids and dealing with parent conflicts should read this. This article influences me to be a better communicator so that in my practice I can better communicate and understand the parent’s concerns.

 

 

The third article that stood out to me was # 43, Number 1, 2004 Exploring Nature with Children Written by Mavis Lewis-Webber. The title of this article caught my attention because I personally believe that being in the outdoors and learning is one of the best ways to teach anyone. For children there is so much wonder and exploration to do, thus building the child’s imagination and confidence. Mavis talks about how everything in the natural world can be used as a building block to help children become responsible and care for their surrounding environment. There are many ways you can teach children about the environment whether it be though animals, insects, and flora. Mavis gives examples of different essay things you can do in your area whether you live in an urban area or a rural one. These ideas involve teaching about recycling, growing a plant, putting up a bird feeder. She talks about how everything has a cycle and it’s important to let things complete its cycle. I think the most important statement she states in the article is that environmental education should be included in all the child care programs. where I feel like at my job we try to. We don’t have a garden or anything to attract animals or bugs but, we do take the children on walks in the woods and to play in different areas where they might see wildlife or bugs. The author said some things that I feel are very important for me to learn, when Mavis talks about how you are a role model to teach the kids it made me think about how I react when I see a wasp and how it might instill fear in the children. I think it’s important for the children to experience new things and learn how the ecosystem works. I feel like I can really relate to this article and it gave me new ideas to try.  It made me think of how I can be a better educator and gave me new tools to use.

 

 There were two that stood out to me for different reasons. I’ll start with the first article Found in Interaction Volume 25, Number 1, Spring 20011, Nurturing Creativity in Children. The title of this article is -To Evaluate or Not Evaluate Preschool Development, That is the question? Written by Suzanne Major, B.A., C.A., M.A. ECE Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology of Health and Education. In this article, Suzanne poses the question of whether or not school readiness can really be determined by professionals who might not know the child as well as the parents or close friends, as these people know the children’s genetic and biological inheritance, as well as their social and family life, temperament, attitude, abilities, and talents.  This quandary leads to the questions; does evaluate school readiness by professionals lend to participating in molding the children to serve a system? Does it provide equal opportunity for self-fulfillment? Does evaluating support integration or assimilation?  These were some big questions that made me really think about conformity vs. individuality.  I’ve always been a person who seeks to embrace the differences in children, whether their specific behavior or development is viewed as a positive attribute in their lives.  Now that I’ve had an opportunity to read this article I can trust my own intuition and know that I most certainly agree with Suzanne on this topic. With my own children, I have never thought the evaluation process in schools was a  beneficial or accurate representation of a child’s learning either. Going forward, I would never suggest evaluating another person’s child in my care as “normal Develpomentaly” as I do not believe that even exists.

Article One Child Development :Developmentally Appropriate Practices in School-Age Child Care

Article Two Behaviour Guidance:Practitioners and Families Together: Encouraging Positive Behaviour

Most of us have strong opinions on how to guide children’s behavior. Unfortunately, these opinions often focus on stopping the inappropriate behavior and neglect to give significant emphasis to helping children learn new, more appropriate ways to behave. People who work with young children have a golden opportunity and an awesome responsibility to help children learn to make appropriate behavior choices which, in turn, can lead to enhanced self-esteem and self-discipline 

Article three Children and Nature :Exploring Nature with Children