7.4: Curriculum

Curriculum

At the heart of early childhood curriculum is the child who depends on adults to support and nurture exploration and learning. An appropriate curriculum for infants and toddlers provides guidance and strategies for supporting development and learning, engaging in responsive interactions to build relationships, and partnering with families. It is essential to consider what learning looks like in the minds of infants and toddlers. Children from birth to 5 do not build or acquire their knowledge and skills in domain-specific categories one domain at a time. They relate to each learning experience as a whole experience. They naturally cross the boundaries of domains and simultaneously build concepts related to social-emotional development, science, mathematics, language, social sciences, the arts, physical development, and health.

A good curriculum leaves decisions about what this looks like to the caregiver implementing the curriculum. When it comes to curriculum, caregivers must:

• have room to discover an infant or toddler's "individual curriculum" (e.g., the child's interests, motivations, and needs)
• choose and offer experiences that match a child's (or small group of children's) interests and developmental level
• use everything that happens as a learning opportunity, both planned/intentional and spontaneous
• create environments that reflect children and families served in the program

A responsive, relationship-based curriculum supports child-initiated, child-pursued opportunities to individualize within the chosen or created curriculum.

Infants

Infants continually use all their senses and competencies to relate new experiences to prior experiences and to understand and create meaning. Infants learn all the time in different and integrated ways. Many aspects of learning occur simultaneously, for example, during book reading, infants use their knowledge and cognitive abilities, understanding of language, physical skills, and experiences at home and in the community to make new connections and expand their knowledge of themselves and the world.

Infants and toddlers are constantly moving, thinking, communicating, and feeling: their learning is integrated across domains and occurs almost every moment of the day. The individualized goals of the children in the infant room are often encouraged during caregiving routines. For infants, the caregiving routines ARE the curriculum.

• the infant listens to the caregiver talk about emotions as a diaper is changed
• mealtime becomes a time to learn new sensory words
• tummy time near a friend may lead to some social skills as well as motor development

Toddlers

Toddlers may be ready for more specific learning opportunities like a short group time or shared story.

It is common for many programs to integrate many aspects of learning with the use of “themes” as a way to weave learning together for children. For some learners, the connection of several learning experiences all related to a common concept can support deeper learning. The most successful themes are those that emerge out of the children’s interest, often called “emergent curriculum.” Some common themes include:

• family
• friendship and caring
• community helpers
• animals and pets
• activities (art, music, baking, camping)
• transportation (cars, busses, trains, planes)
• locations (parks, lakes, farms,…)

Caregivers must be careful to acknowledge what is developmentally appropriate for their group of children and each individual child. Toddlers can be encouraged, but not forced, to join into a group or other more structured activity. Always remember that children learn best through play. Intentional play-based interactions are the foundation of the curriculum.

What Children Learn Through Play

Physical

• Personal care (hygiene, feeding, dressing,)
• Nutrition
• Safety
• Motor (Movement) Skills
  • Active physical play
  • Perceptual-motor (senses, effort, direction,)
  • Gross (large) motor (running, throwing, …)
  • Fine (small) motor (hands, fingers, feet, toes)

Cognitive

• Cognitive approaches to learning and self-regulation
  • Maintain attention
  • Self-comfort
  • Curiosity and initiative
  • Self-control of feelings and behavior
  • Engagement and persistence
• Skills of inquiry
  • Observe, investigate, document, communicate
• Knowledge of the natural/physical world
  • Understanding properties and events
• Cause and effect
  • Understanding relationship between cause/effect
• Classification
  • Learning the attributes of objects by exploring
  • Compare, match, sort, categorize
  • Finding similarities and differences
  • Symbol
• Number
  • Understanding quantity (amount, degree)
  • Assigning a numerical symbol to quantity
  • Counting
• Measurement
  • Awareness of difference in properties
  • (size, length, weight, capacity, volume)
  • Seriation (order 3 or more by comparison)
  • (small/medium/large, loud/louder/loudest)
  • Time (sequence of events, rhythm, yesterday/ tomorrow)
• Patterning
  • Recognize, reproduce, repeating sequences
• Spatial relationships Experiences an object’s position in relation to others

Language

• Symbol/symbolic reasoning
  • Sounds and letters are put together to represent things
• Receptive language
  • Listening, understanding, responding
• Expressive language
  • Speaking, communicating, conversation
• Graphic (written) language/literacy
  • Interest in print & books, phonology, pre-reading, reading
  • Symbol, letter, print knowledge, pre-writing, writing

Social

• Skills learning with adults
  • Can stay at school without parent
  • Can respond/enjoy adults other than parents
  • Adults will help in times of need
  • Adult will not always solve problems
• Skills learned with peers
  • Different approaches work for different peers
  • Cooperation and turn taking
  • Lead and follow
  • Sustain relationships and helping peers
  • Share materials, equipment, people, ideas
  • Asserting rights and self defense
  • Negotiating skills and solving conflicts
  • Anticipate and avoid problems
  • Realistic expectations and valuing differences
• Skills learning in a group
  • Respect
  • Responsibility
  • Compassion
  • Tolerance
  • Group identity
  • Follow and adapt to routines and expectations
  • How to enter and exit situations
  • Deal with delay of gratification (patience)
• Skills learned as an individual
  • Self-help and self-care
  • Make choices and initiate own activities
  • Cope with rejection, hurt feelings, disappointment
  • Take responsibility

Emotional

• Ability to deal with feelings
  • Notice, label, and accept feelings
  • Express feelings in appropriate ways
  • Deal with feelings of others
  • Resolve inner fears, conflicts
• Ability to exercise judgment
  • Notice, label, and make choices
  • Think through consequences
  • Evaluate effectiveness of choices
  • Learn to take another viewpoint
• Enjoying one’s self and one’s power
  • Acquire a sense of self
  • Develop self-confidence and self-esteem
  • Build trust in self and others
  • Reveal own personality
  • Learn to take risks & learn from mistakes
  • Become competent in several areas

Creative

• Flexibility (shifting from 1 idea to another)
• Fluency (producing many ideas)
• Sensitivity (awareness (moods, textures, senses,)
• Imagination / Originality
• Risk Taking / Elaboration (pushing boundaries)
• Self as a resource (awareness, confidence in ability)
• Experience (to build mastery to build upon)
• Visual and Performing Arts

The Three A’s – Attention, Approval, and Attunement

Using the three A’s in caregiving routines ensures that caregivers are making the most of these interaction times. The three A’s are attention, approval and attunement. All involve getting down to a child’s level while acting calmly, moving slowly, making eye contact and engaging with soft speech. There should be lots of positive energy and smiles.

Attention

In general, the things we pay attention to matter the most. It is easy to become distracted and to try to multitask in our busy lives. Caring for young children is no different. One must be intentional while practicing care routines to give full attention to the child. Magda Gerber states it is better to give a child your full attention for a few minutes than to give a child part of your attention for a longer period.

Focus your attention to observe the behavior, skills and needs of children in your care. Identify Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development and challenge the child with new tasks and vocabulary. As a care provider, think about each individual child and be culturally sensitive and responsive to the ways families raise their children.

Approval

The best type of attention is approval. Smile and encourage the attempts of the child. Show respect for the child by allowing them to complete tasks and help them make choices. Slow the process down and engage with the child. Routines are not assembly lines or checklists to complete. By slowing down and following the child’s lead, the caregiver is showing the child that they think the child is competent and independent. A child is rich in resources, strong and confident. They can often do much more then one thinks they can if they are given the opportunity. Children do not just have needs for adults to deal with but rather have rights to appropriate care and education through respect.

Attunement

The caregiver should be aware and responsive to the child. They should be “in tune” to the personality, needs and emotions of each child. Through careful observation a caregiver can learn a child’s signals. Reading and responding to children’s cues creates an “interactional dance”. A caregiver should always allow the child to take the lead. Watching a skilled provider, one often thinks they can read the infants mind and always knows just what to do for each child; this is attunement.

Benefits of Responsive Caregiving

Responsive caregiving is the foundation of crucial brain development. Providing caregiving routines as curriculum and following best practices of the three A’s, children have opportunities to form secure attachments to care providers. As we read earlier, this idea is supported by many theorists. Some childcare centers have used “continuity of care” to maintain this attachment. In this method, a teacher may travel with a group of children from the infant room to toddler room. Often one sees this cycle for a three-year period before the caregiver starts over with a new group of infants. This provides stability and consistency for the child, rather than having to adapt to a new caregiver each year. A high-quality center will also work to eliminate staff turnover so that children have consistent faces.

Additionally, some centers choose to have staff work a 12-hour day so that the caregiver is there with a child all day and can typically communicate with the family and both separation and reunion times.

Establishing communication with the family is the first step to providing culturally responsive care. Each family has their own beliefs and parenting styles. A caregiver should make every attempt to learn more about each family’s culture. The culture may influence their caregiving beliefs or goals for their child. For example, some families may want a young child to learn independence while others may value interdependence. A caregiver may not always agree with the caregiving practices, but unless it is harming the child, the family’s practices should be supported to the best of one’s abilities. All families should feel welcome into the program and should be reflected in the images, books, songs and toys of the environment. A caregiver should try to learn important words in a child’s home language.

Sources

• Stephens, Cindy. Integrated Curriculum / Themes. Principles and Practices of Teaching Young Children. LibreTexts Social Sciences Library. Shared under a CC BY 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Cindy Stephens, Gina Peterson, Sharon Eyrich, & Jennifer Paris (College of the Canyons) .
• Stephens, Cindy. What Children Learn Through Play. Principles and Practices of Teaching Young Children. LibreTexts Social Sciences Library. Shared under a CC BY 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Cindy Stephens, Gina Peterson, Sharon Eyrich, & Jennifer Paris (College of the Canyons) .