Design And Implement Curriculum For Children's Learning And Development Essay.

Each day as an educator, you have a unique opportunity to contribute to an evolving and meaningful program that can:

• provide opportunities for children to build on their learning and understanding
• invite possibilities for children to ask questions, to have some answered, and to leave some still to explore
• encourage children to learn from one another and contribute to the exciting and often unexpected things that happen each day.

The unit Design and implement the curriculum to foster children’s learning and development will provide an opportunity to explore curriculum design and development. The unit has been divided into five (5) topics.

Each topic discusses how you as an educator can design and implement a meaningful, responsive curriculum to fosterchildren’s learning and development, focusing on how to:

• Develop appropriate settings and environments
• Design and implement curriculum in consultation with others
• Design learning experiences to foster children’s learning and development
• Implement learning experiences to foster children’s learning and development
• Assess and evaluate planned and unplanned teaching and learning

Quality education and care can make an enormous difference to a child’s development. But what makes a service one of quality?

A quality service is one where the child, family and community needs are being met, i.e., their physical, social, emotional needs. So, what are the aspects of education and care that will meet these needs?

The key aspects of education and care that contribute to quality include:

• educators (warm and caring, skilful and knowledgeable)
• curriculum (programs, learning frameworks, good nutrition, preventative health care, skilful monitoring of child development, services for children with additional needs, etc.)
• relationships (between educators and children, educators and families and educators and community)
• child to educator ratios
• safety
• settings and environment
• partnerships with families and communities
• effective leadership and service management.

Contributing to a meaningful program

• The format reflects that the children will have adequate time for indoor and outdoor activities. The educators have made sure that the children have enough time to play different sports to develop mental and physical strengths. The philosophy is to develop both mental and physical strengths in children by providing education as well as teaching sports (Wiener, Weaver, Bell & Sansom-Daly, 2015).             
• Team sports and games are few of many ways to develop team spirit within the children. Starting from the very beginning by playing different team sports such as football and other such sports to improve both individual and group strengths in children. Lessors taught in the indoor sessions would help the student to understand the importance of goal setting (Thompson, 2018).
• The above curriculum provides equal opportunity to each and every child and inspire them to participate in different learning and sporting activities. The parents and other observers shall be allowed to give their feedback on the development of mental and physical strengths of children due to the different activities as per the curricular program. As can be seen that there is one column at the end referenced as feedback. The parents and observers of different programs as per the curriculum shall provide their feedback on the effectiveness of these programs and how helpful these programs are to the physical and mental development of children.

Children are allowed to participate in different curriculums without any restrictions to allow children to express themselves freely without any problem. Families by providing their feedback on different curriculums to improve these programs.

• The format is inclusive as it contains all relevant timings for different activities. It is accessible to all the children and families. However, the curriculums are not flexible as far as the timings. The timings will not be changed. The staff and families shall be explained of importance of different curriculums and how these curriculums are expected to improve mental and physical strengths of children (Britto, Lye, Proulx, Yousafzai, Matthews, Vaivada & MacMillan, 2017).
• The educators shall evaluate the impact of different programs on children on regular basis to improve the programs. The objectives of providing the children with proper education and allowing them to participate in sporting activities are the main element of these programs.

With the objective of encouraging children to learn as well as participate in different physical and mental activities the following curriculum has been designed. The National Quality Standards (NCQs) governing the provisions related to early child care and education outside school hours have set the benchmark at very high to ensure proper care and education to the children. NCQs developed by Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality have specifically mentioned seven key areas which shall be the foundation of early child care and education services outside School hours in the country. The seven key areas are as following:

1. Educational practice along with educational program.
2. Health and safety of the children.
3. Environment (physical).
4. Arrangements in relation to the requirements of staffs.
5. Maintaining proper relationship with children.
6. Collaborative partnerships.
7. Leadership and proper governance.    

Taking into considerations the guidelines of NCQs in relation to the above key 7 points the curriculum below for the children has been developed. 

Monday:

Arrival: The children will arrive at 8.00 am in the morning.

The Morning Prayer: The Morning Prayer shall be started immediately after the arrival of all children.      

Learning and teaching session: The classroom learning session shall be started at 9.00 am in the morning and continued till 10.00 am.

Indoor activities: After the completion of first learning and teaching session the children will be motivated to participate in indoor activities such as painting, drawing, and creation of model, handicrafts and other such indoor activities to use their creative imagination. The indoor activities shall span for 1 hour, i.e. from 10.00 am to 11.00 am.

Learning and teaching session: Another hour of learning and teaching session to teach children shall be used effectively from 11.00 am to 12.00 am.

Lunch time: From 12.00 to 12.30 pm the children will have their lunch.  

Learning and teaching session: After completion of lunch on 12.30 pm another hour shall be used to teach the children to improve their mental strengths.  The teaching class will end at 1.30 pm (Pecora, Whittaker, Barth, Maluccio, DePanfilis & Plotnick, 2017). 

Outdoor activities: Outdoor activities such as playing different sports, exercise, running, swimming and other such outdoor activities are equally important as the teaching, learning and indoor activities are. Outdoor activities shall start at 1.30 pm and will continue for 2 hours till 3.30 pm.

The children will be tough the strengths of group and importance of team spirits by playing team sports such as football, cricket and other such sports. Improving the mental and physical strengths of children is the main objective of playing different sports.

The outdoor games and experiences shall include playing outdoor sports such as cricket, football tennis and other such sports. In addition other outdoor activities including running, jumping and other such activities shall also be undertaken to improve mental and physical strengths of children.

The experiences shall be documented and preferably recorded by the educators and observers to observe the impact of various curriculum programs on the mental and physical health of children (Crosson-Tower, 2017).    

The curriculum format is provided below in brief (Diane, Amster, Ross, Margaret, Paul & Judith, 2018).  

The comparative analysis of the two curriculums show that in the recommended curriculum provided above the emphasis of the curriculum is equal on both indoor and outdoor activities whereas the curriculum provided at the beginning has emphasis more on indoor activities and education. It is important for the children to participate in outdoor activities and sports to enhance mental strengths. In the organizational curriculum the lack of emphasis on sports and outdoor activities is clearly visible. The objective of increasing mental and physical strengths of children will be achieved with the recommended curriculum provided above better as compared to the organization curriculum provided at the beginning.           

With the objective of increasing the amount of time of children in education and care centre the timings have been adjusted in the curriculum program format presented above.

References:

Britto, P. R., Lye, S. J., Proulx, K., Yousafzai, A. K., Matthews, S. G., Vaivada, T., ... & MacMillan, H. (2017). Nurturing care: promoting early childhood development. The Lancet, 389(10064), 91-102.

Crosson-Tower, C. (2017). Exploring child welfare: A practice perspective. Pearson.

Diane, S., Amster, B. J., Ross, P. E., Margaret, Z., Paul, D., & Judith, S. (2018). Starting young: Improving the health and developmental outcomes of infants and toddlers in the child welfare system. In Family Foster Care in the Next Century (pp. 149-166). Routledge.

Pecora, P., Whittaker, J., Barth, R., Maluccio, A. N., DePanfilis, D., & Plotnick, R. D. (2017). The child welfare challenge: Policy, practice, and research. Routledge.

Thompson, R. H. (2018). The handbook of child life: A guide for pediatric psychosocial care. Charles C Thomas Publisher.

Wiener, L., Weaver, M. S., Bell, C. J., & Sansom-Daly, U. M. (2015). Threading the cloak: palliative care education for care providers of adolescents and young adults with cancer. Clinical oncology in adolescents and young adults, 5, 1.