Category — Childcare Exchange

American children aged 2 - 11 are watching more television than they have in years.  New findings from the Nielsen Company show children aged 2-5 now spend more than 32 hours a week on average in front of a TV screen.

In a related development, the Walt Disney Company is now offering refunds for all those “Baby Einstein” videos that did not make children into geniuses.  According the New York Times, these videos….

“… may have been great electronic baby sitters, but the unusual refunds appear to be a tacit admission that they did not increase infant intellect.”

“‘We see it as an acknowledgment by the leading baby video company that baby videos are not educational, and we hope other baby media companies will follow suit by offering refu nds,’ said Susan Linn, director of Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, which has been pushing the issue for years.

“Baby Einstein, founded in 1997, was one of the earliest players in what became a huge electronic media market for babies and toddlers.  Acquired by Disney in 2001, the company expanded to a full line of books, toys, flashcards and apparel, along with DVDs including ‘Baby Mozart,’ ‘Baby Shakespeare’ and ‘Baby Galileo.’

“The videos — simple productions featuring music, puppets, bright colors, and not many words — became a staple of baby life:  According to a 2003 study, a third of all American babies from 6 months to 2 years old had at least one ‘Baby Einstein’ video.

“Despite their ubiquity, and the fact that many babies are transfixed by the videos, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no screen time at all for children under 2.”

Lilian Katz, in her book, Intellectual Emergencies: Some Reflections on Mothering and Teaching, offers these insights on professional development…

“Cultivate your own intellect and nourish the life of your own mind.  For teachers, the cultivation of our minds is as important as the cultivation of our capacities for understanding, compassion, and caring — not less, not more — but equally important.  In other words, see yourself as a developing professional; become a student of your own teaching — a career-long student of your own teaching.

“Always assume that the people you work with have the capacities for greatness, creativity, courage and insight.  Occasionally this assumption will be wrong, perhaps.  But if you always make it, you will be much more likely t o uncover, encourage, strengthen, and support these qualities.”

“Everyone is born creative;  everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten,” writes Hugh MacLeod in Ignore Everybody And 39 Other Keys to Creativity (New York: Portfolio, 2009).  He continues…

“Then when you hit puberty they take away the crayons away and replace them with dry, uninspiring books on algebra, history, etc.  Being suddenly hit years later with the ‘creativity bug’ is just a wee voice telling you, ‘I’d like my crayons back please.’

“So you’ve got the itch to do something.  Write a screenplay, start a painting, write a book, turn your recipe for fudge brownies into a proper business, build a better mousetrap, whatever.  You don’t know where the itch came from, it’s almost like it just arrived on your doorstep, uninvited.  Until now you were quite happy holding down a real job, being a regular person.

“…. That wee voice didn’t show up because you decided you need more money, or need to hang out with movie stars.   Your wee voice came back because your soul somehow depends on it.  There’s something you haven’t said, something you haven’t done, some light that needs to be switched on, and it needs to be taken care of.  Now.

“So you have to listen to the wee voice or it will die… taking a big chunk of you along with it.  They’re only crayons.  You didn’t fear them in kindergarten, why fear them now?”

“Adults need to take a more active role in many ways, than in the past, in helping children to learn how to be friends and what you do to be friends, because they’re having less spontaneous opportunities to interact with peers in positive give-and-take ways.”

This is the observation of Nancy Carlsson-Paige and Diane Levin in their chapter, “Children’s Friendships in Contemporary Society,” from the Exchange book, Connecting: Friendship in the Lives of Young Children and Their Teachers.  They continue…

“They’re having more time in front of the screen, families often interact less, say, during dinner.  There’s less neighborhood play where children would spontaneously play with other children outside.  So we’re often left with a situation where children don’t have as many places in which to learn the positive things they should be learning that help them feel powerful and effective and counteract all those negative messages they’re learning about social interactions on television.”

In her Beginnings Workshop article, “The Spirit of Place,” (Exchange, September, 1997) Anita Rui Olds discussed the importance of considering the mood of children . . .

“Being forced to maintain the same level of alertness and concentration all day undoubtedly places internal stress on children’s bodies, even if this is not perceptible to the adult eye.  A variety of moods — providing options for different levels of engagement — helps people to feel comfortable and remain alert in the same environment over long periods of time.  Many centers suffer from either blandness or overstimulation with insufficient variety of mood within each group room.

“The mood for each function should match the level of activity and physical energy children expend in performing it.  Tranquil activities occur best in warm, soft, textured spaces.  Expansive activities require spaces that are cooler, harder, and more vibrant in tone. The ultimate goal is a room with several activity areas, each of which has a unique spirit of place.  Then, as children go from place to place within the room’s four walls, they can experience spaces that are soft and hard, dark and light, cold and warm, colorful and bland, large and small, noisy and quiet.”

Over the past decade there has been a raging debate in the early childhood field between those who favor accelerated academic instruction and those who favor free play for three, four, and five year olds.  The New York Times Magazine (September 27, 2009) joined in on this debate with an article, “The Make-Believe Solution,” which described a curriculum of organized make-believe play called “Tools of the Mind.”  This curriculum is said to be based on these concepts proposed by Lev Vigotsky in the first quarter of the 20th century:

• At 4 or 5, a child’s ability to play creatively with other children is a better indicator of her future academic success than any other indicator, including her vocabulary, her counting skills, or her knowledge of the alphabet.
• Dramatic play is the training ground where children learn to regulate themselves, to conquer their own unruly minds.
• In dramatic play children are guided by the basic principles of play. Make-believe isn’t as stimulating and satisfying if players don’t stick to their roles. When children follow the rules of make-believe and push one another to follow those rules, they develop important habits of self control.

A new report makes a case for paying more attention to the critical role that out-of-school factors have on children’s school success.  Commenting on his report, “Poverty and Potential Out-of-School Factors and School Success“, author Henry C. Berliner, a professor of educational leadership at Arizona State University, observed, “As wonderful as some teachers and schools are, most cannot eliminate inequalities that have their roots outside their doors.”

Berliner’s research focuses on 7 out-of-school factors that influence student’s academic success and lead to inequalities among children:
•    prenatal care
•    health care
•    food insecurity
•    environmental pollutants
•    family stress
•    neighborhood characteristics
•    extended learning opportunities

The report calls for, among other things, the nation to provide high-quality preschools for all children and universal free medical care.

From Childcare Exchange - www.childcareexchange.com

Time for play in most public kindergartens has dwindled to the vanishing point, replaced by lengthy lessons and standardized testing, according to three new studies released today by the Alliance for Childhood. Classic play materials like blocks, sand and water tables, and props for dramatic play have largely disappeared from the 268 full-day kindergarten classrooms studied. The studies were conducted by researchers from U.C.L.A., Long Island University, and Sarah Lawrence College in New York. Their findings are documented in Crisis in the Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in School. The researchers found that:

• On a typical day, kindergartners in Los Angeles and New York City spend four to six times as long being instructed and tested in literacy and math (two to three hours per day) as in free play or “choice time” (30 minutes or less).
• Standardized testing and preparation for tests are now a daily activity in most of the kindergartens studied, despite the fact that the use of most such tests with children under age eight is scientifically invalid and leads to harmful labeling.
• In many kindergarten classrooms there is no playtime at all. Teachers say the curriculum does not incorporate play, there isn’t time for it, and many school administrators do not value it.

Child development experts have been raising alarms about the increasingly didactic, test-driven, and joyless course of early childhood education. “These practices, which are not well grounded in research, violate long-established principles of child development and good teaching,” states the Alliance’s report. “It is increasingly clear that they are compromi sing both children’s health and their long-term prospects for success in school.”

“Children — both boys and girls — seem to love the experience of very rich big-body play,” observes Francis Carlson in her Exchange article, “Rough and Tumble Play 101,” which can be viewed on the home page of www.ChildCareExchange.com.  In her article, Carlson describes how to support appropriate rough and tumble play and shares these benefits from allowing it to happen:

“Through the (very) physical interactions required in rough and tumble play, children are learning the give-and-take of appropriate social interactions. Successful participation in this play requires children to become ade pt at both signaling and detecting signals — a social skill they will need and use throughout their lives. When detecting these signals, they are learning to read and understand the body language signifying the play should come to an end. The play also requires children to alternate and change roles. Sometimes one child chases; at another time the child is chased. Because this give-and-take mimics successful social conversations and interactions, the social roles practiced and learned in rough and tumble play provide children with the social knowledge needed for future relationships.

“Social and emotional domains are not the only developmental areas positively affected by this play. When children use this big-body play, the intense physical exertion of rough and tumble play also supports cardiovascular health. Through their involvement, young children get the moderate to vigorous physical activity needed for optimum physical health. And, because rough and tumble play is so physical, children get many of their vital touch needs met through the play. Because the preschool period is a critical period for children to develop both physically and emotionally, rough and tumble play for preschoolers is invaluable.”

In the Q & A portion of his new Exchange book, Natural Playscapes: Creating Outdoor Play Environments for the Soul, Rusty Keeler talks about how messiness in outdoor play is important to learning and how to explain that to parents:

“Childhood is supposed to be messy and and natural playscapes [outdoor play areas] offer a kind of messiness that inspires learning and creativity. Children make mud pies out of mud; they pile up leaves and carry them around; sand and dirt are good for digging in. Two vital tricks are: having an extra set of ‘messy clothes’ on hand to change into and reminding parents to dress their children appropriately for play. If parents feel uncomfortable with the mess, tell them ‘the dirtier your child gets at school, the better reader they will become.’ When they scratch their heads, and look doubtful, explain that the experiences a young child has playing set up the foundation for future learning. The skills they learn on the playscape, such as having the confidence to try things they’ve never done before, will later translate to the school setting. For example, the world of reading — sounding out letters and words they’ve never seen — could seem daunting unless children have had positive experiences stretching themselves, gaining confidence, and growing through play. A natural playscape makes it easy for children to find challenging ways to dig, jump, stomp, and splash — and yes, get messy in the process — all on their way to becoming better readers.”