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My Connections to Play

Children need the freedom and time to play. Play is not a luxury. Play is a necessity.

Kay Redfield Jamison
Contemporary American professor of psychiatry

In play a child always behaves beyond his average age, above his daily behavior. In play it is as though he were a head taller than himself.

Lev Vygotsky
Russian psychologist
1896–1934

http://www.thestrong.org/about-play/play-quotes

  

Describe how people supported play when you were younger and/or the role of play in your childhood.

Well I don’t really know how to answer this. When I was 4 I suffered a third degree burn to my right hand and spent about a year to a year and a half in a hospital unable to use my hands. One was covered with medically dressing ( I had to have multiple surgeries on that hand) and one had IV’s in it. I don’t remember much from that time period at all. But I always loved playing with the above toys.  

The thing that sticks out the most about my child play is that boys were not encouraged to participate in dramatic play, and girls was not encouraged to play sports. Today it’s the total opposite, boys are not only encouraged but they enjoy playing in the dramatic play area with the dolls and cooking. Also girls are being encouraged not only to play sports but to play them with the boys. I feel that this teaches are children that they are all equal regardless of their gender.  I hope that government and school wake up and see that children are learning so much when they play, it’s not just them having fun. I didn’t play much when I was growing up, I always had to be the little grown up with responsibility. When I started taking care of my younger siblings I watched how they would learn from playing with each other. I loved the way that they were learning shapes, colors, etc. just from play. From them I learned that play is the best way for children to learn.

Relationship Reflection

<<<Me and 1 of my grandsons Dom
M<<<My 2 dogs Goldie (black one) annd Brandie (brown one) & my grand dog Zippy and grand cat Billy<<2 of my daughter by other parents, me and my son. (I raised the girls from the ages of 6 and 5).
This is the love of my life my little king Vynsint he was born at 26 weeks gestation and was given a 50/50 chance of living.


This is my 3rd daughter by other parents and my granddaughter Char-Char


This young lady is my granddaughter Autumn and my little king.

Relationships/Partnerships are important to me because they help to give my life meaning, joy, love,  and raising my daughters taught me that I’m a strong person and despite my upbringing I’m a good parent. Everyone needs to have special relationships with people in their life to help them grow and learn and develop. When you have partnerships with people in your life you also learn and develop from them. Relationships and partnerships allow you to develop an understanding about others and their needs, wants, history and culture.

I have a positive relationship with my children. With the girls it was a learning process I was 19 when I inherited them. I didn’t know much about positive parenting ( I come from an abusive home). All I knew is that I wanted them to have a better life than I had growing up. I always keep an open line of communication with them, I included them in decisions and I asked for their input on everything. I made mistakes along the way but because I always talked to them it helped. Communication is the most important thing to keeping a relationship or a partnership alive and working correctly, it is also the most challenging part.

Thanks to my children and having to grow up and become a parent at an early age I learned that communication is very important. I feel that learning that had having to ask for help with raising them sometimes from the teachers that they had has made me a better teacher. I understand that when families are having a hard time it’s not always easy for them to ask for help. I learned to observe not only the children but the parents also. I learned how to offer help without making the families feel bad about needing the help. Most important thing that I learned from my kids is that I love working with children and that I want to be there from the start when the need for a tender hand is the most important and can make the most difference in a child’s and their families life.

A Note of Professional Thanks

I would like to take the time and say thank you to all my fellow classmates for the wonderful post they have made on their blogs and also the wonderful and helpful information that they have shared. Thank you to the ones that have left comments on my blogs they were very helpful and encouraging. I wish you much success and happiness!

Quote About Children

For this week we are suppose to post one quote about children, but I have chosen to post a few (lol) more. These are some of my favorite ones. Enjoy


Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands

It takes a village to raise a child.
- African proverb

Children require guidance and sympathy far more than instruction.

Children need love, especially when they do not deserve it.

Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.

Children are unpredictable. You never know what inconsistency they’re going to catch you in next.

In America there are two classes of travel – first class, and with children.

There’s nothing that can help you understand your beliefs more than trying to explain them to an inquisitive child.

Children are like wet cement. Whatever falls on them makes an impression.

Children are the world’s most valuable resource and its best hope for the future

Children will not remember you for the material things you provided but for the feeling that you cherished them.

Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. They seem not to notice us, hovering, averting our eyes, and they seldom offer thanks, but what we do for them is never wasted.

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.

Assessments How I Feel ABout Them

“….Special ed law embraces the “disability is natural” paradigm, and requires schools to educate children with disabilities in general ed classes and provide them with the assistive technology, supports, and modifications they need to be successful…” (Snow, 2003) Without assessments this statement would hold no meaning for children that don’t have a visible disability. Not all disabilities can be seen with the eye, that is why I feel that assessments are a good source of information regarding children’s development and if they might need additional support in their personal and educational lives. I even feel that  gifted children need to have assessments done to actually see how gifted they are and also if they are mentally stable enough to handle the pressure of the additional requirements for a gifted program. I had my son tested for the gifted program at the suggestion of his teacher. She felt that he was not being challenged enough in her class because he learned faster than the other children and got bored in the class easily. Me personal I thought he might be ADHAD, his score was like five points away from what is required for the gifted program but the school put him in the class anyway and I’m proud to say he is at the top of his class and doesn’t get into trouble anymore.  My son has be measured and assessed since he was born. He was born at 26 weeks gestational time after being without a water bag for 18 days. I’m happy that they did all those test to make sure he was well. They released him from the “preterm clinic” at the age of 3 because he was advance for his age and able to do things that 4 and 5 year olds were tested on. The 1st picture is when my son was 2 weeks old and the first time I got to hold him without him being connected to machines and wrapped up like a tamale. The 2nd picture is my son at 11 years old and in the 5th grade doing very well.

I chose Africa to learn more about the assessments in school age children. I have a best friend from Africa and I like to learn new information about her country.

The use of assessment to improve the quality of education in African education systems over the past two decades are described in four categories of assessment: public examinations, national assessments, international assessments, and classroom assessment.

Public Examination:

Public (external) examinations have played a major role throughout the history of modern education in Africa. They serve a number of functions, the most important of which is to select students for successive levels in the education system. Despite their central role, many criticisms have been made of their quality. In particular, it has been observed that examinations are limited in the areas of knowledge and skills that they assess; they contain little reference to the knowledge and skills that students need in their everyday life outside the school; and they tend to measure achievement at a low taxonomic level.

 National Assesments:

While public examinations are a long-standing feature of education systems,

national assessments (sometimes called system assessments, learning assessments, or less
appropriately assessments of learning outcomes) are relatively new. A national
assessment may be defined as an exercise designed to describe the level of achievements,
not of individual students, but of a whole education system, or a clearly defined part of it
(e.g., fourth grade pupils or 11-year olds).

International Assessments:

International assessments differ from national assessments in that they can provide some indication of where the achievements of students in a country stand relative to the achievements of students in other countries.

Classroom Assessments:

The assessment of students’ learning in the classroom (both by teachers and by students themselves) is an integral component of the teaching-learning process. Much of this kind of assessment is subjective, informal, immediate, on-going, and intuitive, as it interacts with learning as it occurs, monitoring student behavior, scholastic performance, and responsiveness to instruction. Its role is to determine students’ current level of knowledge, skill, or understanding, to diagnose problems they may be encountering, to make decisions about the next instructional steps to take (to revise or to move on), and to evaluate the learning that has taken place in a lesson.

References:

Kellaghan, T. & Greaney, V. Monitoring performance assessment and examinations in Africa. Retrieved from:

http://toolkit.ineesite.org/toolkit/INEEcms/uploads/1089/Monitoring_Performance_Assessment_Examinations.pdf

Snow, K. (2003-2009). Redefining disability. Retrieved from http://www.disabilityisnatural.com/images/PDF/redefindis.pdfl

Stress on the Development of Children

It was so hard to pick just one stressor that affected me as a child, I had so many. The one that I picked was and still is the hardest for me to understand. Racism I’m a person of a mult-race background. As I child I was not accepted by any race, they all made fun of me and called me a “mutt”. I compensated for that stressor by withdrawing into myself and not trying to make friends, instead I put all my energy into reading and my school work. Even now I sometimes have a problem with racism as an adult. I politely state that I’ don’t speak Spanish or when asked what race I am I will reply “I’m a bag of Skittles” which gets me a lot of laughs.

I have chosen Africa and the stressors that children there face. One of the major stressors that affects these children is hunger.  “Chronic malnutrition remains widespread in Africa, and the target of a 50 per cent reduction of malnutrition in children under five is far out of reach. Fully one in three Africans is malnourished and, despite improvements in some countries, the absolute number of hungry children rose during the decade. Statistics on low birth weight reveal that an estimated one in eight African babies -- some 3.1 million infants -- is born underweight each year.” (Africa Renewal) What is being done to improve this? According to the Millennium Development Goals: they have improved cooking stoves, access to energy, nets to help fishermen, and the continued request for support from other countries to support the donation of food to the people of Africa.

References:

http://www.un.org/en/africarenewal/vol16no1/161child.htm

http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/mdgoverview/mdg_goals/mdg1/