Infant/Toddler Curriculum

According to head start curriculum means a written plan that includes: goals for children’s development learning experience through which they will achieve these goals what staff and parents do to help children achieve these goals; and materials needed to support the implementation of the curriculum. Building on children’s varying experiences, including their family, linguistics, and cultural backgrounds; their individual approaches to learning; and their informal knowledge.

To provide a broad, balanced and integrated curriculum with a view to developing the individual child’s full potential.

The curriculum is characterized by many features advocated by contemporary research on young children, including real-life problem-solving among peers, with numerous opportunities for creative thinking and exploration. Teachers often work on projects with small groups of children, while the rest of the class engages in a wide variety of self-selected activities typical of preschool classrooms.

Curriculum is so much more than the paper copy of lessons and activities that we receive as teachers, but before this course I never really thought of curriculum as

Early Childhood Education illustrates the teaching and care of children in other environments outside of the home. Early childhood centers on the development of all children no matter their gender, race, abilities, or ethnic orientation and gives knowledge of early childhood learning process, which entails values, culture, desires of parents for their children, and especially a child’s need for knowledgeable functionality in society.

When it comes to curriculums it is important to know what kids interest are and to find out what they are learning. Children being involved in the classroom is more than just participating in the lesson. The themes need to help and expand the

2. Utilize the curriculum to plan developmentally appropriate activities that promote learning and development for preschoolers and toddlers.

The next most important aspect is providing developmentally appropriate curriculum. Students need safe and age appropriate toys and things to explore. They also need to be able to appropriately learn from the materials that are provided in the classroom. All materials must be appropriate for all students.

In early learning environments, children acquire knowledge and develop cognitive, social and emotional, physical and language acquisition skills in the content areas such as language arts, math, science, and social studies in a variety of ways. It is up to the teachers to plan and implement in-depth studies of themes and topics that are meaningful and relevant to the children, being sure to address the development of the whole child while integrating all of the content areas. In the physical classroom the environment should provide students with hands-on opportunities to grow and develop skills, gain knowledge, and have fun as they explore carefully designed learning centers. They should be provided with materials that are related to

Activities and projects are planned by educators to match the skills, interests and unique needs of the specific children they are working with. Applying emergent curriculum to an early childhood education center is a process that requires an understanding of the individual children in your care as well as the group as a whole. As a teacher, your role is to carefully observe and listen to children as they play, determine their areas of interest, then develop a plan or curriculum to direct their learning which reflects these interests. The emergent curriculum approach allows early childhood educators to gain greater insight into the needs of each individual child and their needs, allowing for thoughtful and customized programming. The flexible and open-ended nature of emergent curriculum lets children and educators alike to explore, answer questions and guide learning in a way that evolves over time. An emergent curriculum involves the whole child; meaning the social, emotional, cognitive, and physical realms of development and learning. The main thought behind Emergent Curriculum (as well as other early childhood approaches) is that children learn not necessarily by what they are taught but “learn as a result of their own doing.” Emergent Curriculum is a teaching philosophy that focuses on the development of lesson plans based on the emerging interests of

“Infant and toddler curriculum plans focus on how to best create a social, emotional, and intellectual

It has been well established that early childhood is a crucial time for children’s cognitive development (Bowman, Donovan & Burns, 2001). Preschool curriculum is the entire span of lessons and teachings that a child will be taught during the course of a preschool year (Rock, 2015). Preschool curriculum covers a wide variety of academic, social, physical, and emotional lessons and usually vary from school to school and teaching method to teaching method. Depending upon the school and the preschool philosophy employed by the preschool, the preschool curriculum can be developed by administrators, teachers, and parents.

Although it is impossible to agree on just one definition of curriculum, one can understand the idea based on how it functions in relation to education practice by aligning the three major types of curriculum, which are intended curriculum, implemented

The meaning of the term’ curriculum’ is difficult to define. For school, Pratt (in Brady and Kennedy, 2014, p. 3) argues that curriculum can be ‘an organized set of formal educational and training intentions’. For students, Marsh and Wills (in Brady and Kennedy, 2014, p. 3) maintain that curriculum is ‘an interrelated set of plans and experiences that a student undertakes under the guidance of the school’, while for teachers, the challenge is to develop curricula that will cater for the needs of all students (Ah Sam & Ackland, 2005). There are various meanings attached to the term’ curriculum’. My personal definition for school curriculum is that schools develop programs of different study areas basing on the content of the national curriculum document; teachers plan their teaching basing on the programs; eventually, students experience the curriculum by engaging in diverse teaching activities. In this essay, I will be discussing The Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) in relation to the strategic plan and teaching philosophy of Hampton Park East Kindergarten.

According to Blaise and Nuttall (2011), to understand curriculum, we must first understand what is meant by the term curriculum. Within curriculum there are five key concepts, they are the intended curriculum The Intended curriculum is the curriculum that the teachers want the children to experience in order to develop particular knowledge, skills, and attitudes. (Blaise & Nuttall, 2011, p. 82). The enacted curriculum is what teachers want students to experience. important reason why the intended curriculum is enacted differently from teacher to teacher, from classroom to classroom, is that a key part of a teachers work is to interpret the official curriculum, taking into account a wide range of variables that are specific to their classroom and school setting.