Informative Essay: Does Hands On Activities Help Children

I have inside gross motor activities such as a climber, beanbags, musical and dance items, and blocks. I have fine motor activities too, such as small and large beads, Legos, dress up dolls, stencils, and chain links. I provide an ample supply of books for the children to look at and read. I allow plenty of time for children to draw and practice writing skills.

As an early years practitioner you will recognise that children’s play is closely linked to their learning and development. Children learn in so many different ways but you will notice that they learn mainly through play. When children are able to do many different activity’s that allows them to lean but have fun at the same time thy will find what they are doing fun and will engage the children. It is important that when in you your setting you set up a variety of educational activity’s this way the children will be able to choose freely what they want to do.

Physical: To promote physical development, children will have many opportunities to engage in activities that will strengthen fine motor, gross motor and sensory skills. They will participate in art and craft activities that will allow them to refine the use of their hands and fingers for more precise movements and further develop their hand eye coordination. The children will have the opportunity to participate in several outdoor, large group gross motor activities. These activities are designed to improve coordination (when moving or standing still), balance, and spatial awareness during movement. There are also activities that will engage the children in tasting and touching to help further develop their sensory skills.

As an educator, I am a strong advocate for hands on learning. I envision my classroom with students actively learning by manipulating objects, preforming experiments, creating, presenting, teaching one another, and most importantly connecting what they learned to the real world. This type of instruction reaches students with different learning styles

The students get a 5-minute break in between classes due to the fact they have an extended period. The students have to keep their grades up to remain in the program. They learn things

1.1 Explain why physical activity is important to the short and long term health and well being of children.

On Friday I spent the morning with Jacob who is six years one month old at College America. The morning began with a physical assessment and an interview of Jacob, and the afternoon I was able to observe him at play. Jacob is in first grade and he is the oldest child in his family with a younger brother and a younger sister. After doing a physical assessment and an interview with Jacob he appears to be an overall healthy and happy child with no obvious physical or emotional problems. According to Erikson’s developmental stages Jacob is in stage three where Jacob should be developing purpose in his life.

After reading Children Need to Play, Not Compete by Jessica Statsky I thought she brought up some very valid points. I do think that this is a topic that should be scrutinized. I have a different view of the subject. I think that competition can be physically, and psychologically harmful if left unchecked by "abusive/uncaring" adults. I do think that with the right, caring and team work fostering environment competition can fostered without harmful effects, and can lead to learning lifelong skills that can bring emotional joy.

By taking advantage of the children's high interest and engagement in different areas of play, educators can plan for play based activities that encourage learning and development in children. In order to do this the teacher needs to set up an environment that stimulates various play activities. Providing the children with a multitude of materials and props for different activities, will give them the freedom of choice to choose what they wish to use and how they want to use it. There must be a period of time structured into the daily schedule that will allow for play based learning activities, and reflection on them. Children can learn not only by engaging in play, but by discussing what they were

Many elementary school teachers use fun activities to teach their students basic skills, such as: counting, ABC’s, and many other things. Students this young need activities to stay focus and many studies show that students who have activities along with their learning materials grasp the concepts better than a student with not activity or visual aid (“Kindergarten and Elementary school teachers.”).

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.

Children develop normally when they are exposed to different types of play that allow them to express themselves while using their imaginations and being physically active. According to the Center for Health Education, Training and Nutrition Awareness, “Play is child’s work”; this is true because it is a child’s job is to learn and develop in their first few years of life, in order for them to do this, they play (CHETNA). Not only is playing a child’s full time job, the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights listed play as a right of every child (Ginsburg). Through their full time job of play, the children develop emotionally, socially, physically, and creatively. Children need to participate in child-led play in order to

Engaging students in the classroom can be a difficult task. Understanding the process of how students learn can help a teacher adapt the lesson to meet the needs of all students. I will encounter students that are not intrinsically motivated so I will need to find different ways to motivate each and every student. Understanding how my students learn can provide me with insights as to how to help each student learn which will minimize classroom management problems.

Young children love to explore learning through different kinds of play! Play activity is one of the active learning techniques. For example, peer play improves preschoolers’ language, social, gross motor and cognitive skills. Children grow and develop better through verbal communication and physical performance. Social

Hands-on experiences are authentic experiences that the child will carry with them longer than a lesson out of a book. Dewey sums it up for me in saying, "I believe that education which does not occur through forms of life, or that are worth living for their own sake is always a poor substitute for the genuine reality and tends to cramp and to deaden." (Dewey 23) In my opinion, it is truly pointless to teach children without letting them experiment and become a part of the lesson.