Questions and Activities Please read the checklist at the end of this assessment before you begin. 1. Why is play important for children? Play is important for children because playing is the process that essential to children’s developmental progress. Children need to go through each level of process to generate, develop and enhance their developmental progress and well being. In playing, children will need to use their physical ability, able to explore and apply their creativity and naturally started to think which is part of their cognitive development as well. Any involvement do contribute to language development as part of children’s developmental progress.
When children developed ideas and creating playing terms, or toys that they are playing with and even the term used in the movement, by having the knowledge of the term, children will be able to name the toys, playing terms and movement accordingly. Also, by having a chance to discover new things and/or explore nature, will enhance their knowledge and opportunity to play. This will improve creativity and develop their thinking skills better, as they can experience things that will also helps building their problem solving skill too. Physical involvement will help children develop their gross motor skill when moving around like walking, running, hopping etc.
By allowing children involved in manupulative play that requires more concentration for example threading or fastening shoe laces will naturally promoting their eye coordination and their fine motor skill. When children is playing, their social skill is improved because children usually will be happy playing on their own or along with other children. It will help them to improve their social skill when they start to learn to share things, or taking turns in doing things, and also learn to respect other people’s interest besides exposing themselves to be in a team that will benefit them in teamwork culture at their later age. 2. It is important to expose children to different systems such as letters, numbers, time, money and musical notation. Give an example of an activity you could do with children using each of these systems. a. Letters Letters is important to be exposed to children because they need to recognise letters together with the phonic sounds that will help them to read.
Children must know how to read in order to be competent at school, with their daily life and for developing their future knowledge. If at some point when children were not be able to read yet, they may face difficulty in learning that will affect their level of development. Activity: Colouring (2 12 years old) • To play ABC song and sing together and at the same time showing a flash card that synchronise with the song. • Choose letter “a” and write it on the board and draw an apple together to relate the “a” is for apple. Saying out the letter and get children to follow. • Distribute paper with the letter “a” comes with a picture of an apple. Get children to colour the letter “a” and the apple at their own creativity. b. Numbers Numbers is important to be exposed to children because by knowing numbers children will be able to prepare themselve to be ready for school that need to learn mathematics.
By knowing numbers, children will have the foundation on how to count that is essential in daily live. Children must know the basic of counting in stages which include additions, substractions, multiplications and division and also how numbers can be applied in measuring. At later stage, the children will be exposed to various ways of counting such as counting money, telling the time and many more. By getting the concept right, knowing numbers will give children a good start. Activity: Stick the numbers (3 years old) • To read a number’s book to children. Get children participate to guess the number that shown in the book and follow with the showing a soft toy of caterpillar that comes with numbers on its body.
• Get children to make a long shape of catepillar using playdough. Distribute “numbered lollipop” ice cream sticks with numbers on it) and get the children to stick those “lollipop sticks” on the caterpillar accordingly. C. Time Time is important to expose to children because it is for them to understand the concept of living. There are large scope of time that include time of the day, day/s, week/s, month/s, year/s, hour/s, minute/s, second/s and so on. At early age children would not be able to understand the whole concept of time. What they usually can relate to is according to their own daily routine probably without having a clear understanding the time of the day.
Time need to be introduced by stages to avoid confusion. However, gradually they need to understand a different concept of time, for them to get things and themselves organised accordingly. Slowly they will adapt with the time changes and later on they will be able to read a clock and calendar on their own. Activity : Pick and choose (3 years old) • To read a story book related to children daily routine with a different time of the day (morning, afternoon and night). Get children participation by telling their routine when waking up, before they go to bed etc. • To have a different sky background board made of felt paper (come with a set of pictures) 1) Morning (loose pictures : waking up from bed, brushing teeth) 2) Afternoon (loose pictures: reading, playground) 3) Night (loose pictures: bed time story, sleeping) • Loose pictures (velcroed) to be picked by children and paste accordingly to test their understanding. d. Money Money is important to expose to children because it is the only tool that is used in trade transaction in the modern world. Besides the trading, that only uses money for commercial transactions, children need to understand the value of it too.
Children will grow up and become an independent person, and the time will come when they need to do their own commercial transaction, such as buying, selling or money exchanged on their own without their parents or older sibling to do for them. Children need to be ready to understand simple transactions before they go to more complex transactions. For instant, they need to understand the value of money and how to use it as they are going to a primary level. From time to time children will be able to use money wisely with a good and proper guidance in their learning.
Activity : Role Play – Mini market (4 years old) • Toy cash machines, fake money and mock products according to daily needs (cereals, fresh milks, juices, bananas, apples, biscuits, breads). . To set up two payment counters, two shelves and tables to display products. One child act as cashier at each payment counter and rotate the position with other children. Some fake money will be stored in the cashier machines and some given to children who are acting as shoppers going to shop. e. Musical notation
3. Using the National Physical Activity Guidelines, what are the physical activity guidelines for 0-5 year olds and 5-12 year olds? 4. Explain how the following situations could contribute to developmental issues in children: a. Poor diet When a child is having a poor diet, their body will lack of nutrition and would not be able to progress accordingly. Children with a poor diet will easily get tired, lethargic and often sick. When the child’s body does not perform well, it will automatically affect the brain and slower their performance. Also, chances that children will lack of interest and potentially not participating enough into their development process. They tend to have poor concentration and lack of focus that will not helping them to progress. Due to poor diet, it will not helping children to progress well, instead it is giving poor impact of their development when it will lower down children’s developmental level.
