關於 early childhood education benefits ，我們在網路上蒐集到這些相關的討論、資訊與評價

Facilitating a Kindergarten #TeacherTraining session!

I’ve always believed that Pedagogy and Practice go hand in hand.
While my M.Ed. in Early Childhood Education helped structure my knowledge in academic discourse, I recognise that much of my learnings have come from PRACTICE— the sense of understanding HOW concepts are rolled out in our daily interactions with children.

This is why, in Professional Development Sessions, I endeavour to strike a balance between theory and practice. Theory legitimises the educational concept; Practice allows us to make it matter to the children we reach out to.

Thank you, @fairchild_hongkong and @kendallpreschool for letting me share the whys and hows of music-based learning in the #EarlyYears classroom.

It was an interesting exchange of addressing multiple learning styles within the creative classroom. I hope that as we keep collaborating, we continue to bring the benefits of our knowledge from @kindermusikhk to more educators and families in Hong Kong!

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@baumhaushk is the official distributor of the @kindermusikinternational program in Hong Kong & Macau.

Recognised as #1 in Hong Kong (and #4 among thousands of programs in the world) we are currently reaching out to bring this program into schools, community centres and organisations.

#BaumhausHK #ArtsBasedEducation #CreativeArts #KindermusikHK #Kindermusik

⛔ LUYỆN READING NÀO ⛔

THE IMPORTANCE OF CHILDREN'S PLAY

Brick by brick, six-year-old Alice is building a magical kingdom. Imagining fairy-tale turrets and fire-breathing dragons, wicked witches and gallant heroes, she's creating an enchanting world. Although she isn't aware of it, this fantasy is helping her take her first steps towards her capacity for creativity and so it will have important repercussions in her adult life.
Minutes later, Alice has abandoned the kingdom in favour of playing schools with her younger brother. When she bosses him around as his 'teacher', she's practising how to regulate her emotions through pretence. Later on, when they tire of this and settle down with a board game, she's learning about the need to follow rules and take turns with a partner.

'Play in all its rich variety is one of the highest achievements of the human species,' says Dr David Whitebread from the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge, UK. 'It underpins how we develop as intellectual, problem-solving adults and is crucial to our success as a highly adaptable species.'
Recognising the importance of play is not new: over two millennia ago, the Greek philosopher Plato extolled its virtues as a means of developing skills for adult life, and ideas about play-based learning have been developing since the 19th century.

But we live in changing times, and Whitebread is mindful of a worldwide decline in play, pointing out that over half the people in the world now live in cities. 'The opportunities for free play, which I experienced almost every day of my childhood, are becoming increasingly scarce,' he says. Outdoor play is curtailed by perceptions of risk to do with traffic, as well as parents' increased wish to protect their children from being the victims of crime, and by the emphasis on 'earlier is better' which is leading to greater competition in academic learning and schools.

International bodies like the United Nations and the European Union have begun to develop policies concerned with children's right to play, and to consider implications for leisure facilities and educational programmes. But what they often lack is the evidence to base policies on.

'The type of play we are interested in is child-initiated, spontaneous and unpredictable- but, as soon as you ask a five-year-old "to play", then you as the researcher have intervened,' explains Dr Sara Baker. 'And we want to know what the long-term impact of play is. It's a real challenge.'

Dr Jenny Gibson agrees, pointing out that although some of the steps in the puzzle of how and why play is important have been looked at, there is very little data on the impact it has on the child's later life.

Now, thanks to the university's new Centre for Research on Play in Education, Development and Learning (PEDAL), Whitebread, Baker, Gibson and a team of researchers hope to provide evidence on the role played by play in how a child develops.

'A strong possibility is that play supports the early development of children's self-control,' explains Baker. 'This is our ability to develop awareness of our own thinking processes - it influences how effectively we go about undertaking challenging activities.'

In a study carried out by Baker with toddlers and young pre-schoolers, she found that children with greater self-control solved problems more quickly when exploring an unfamiliar set-up requiring scientific reasoning. 'This sort of evidence makes us think that giving children the chance to play will make them more successful problem-solvers in the long run.'

If playful experiences do facilitate this aspect of development, say the researchers, it could be extremely significant for educational practices, because the ability to self-regulate has been shown to be a key predictor of academic performance.

Gibson adds: 'Playful behaviour is also an important indicator of healthy social and emotional development. In my previous research, I investigated how observing children at play can�give us important clues about their well-being and can even be useful in the diagnosis of neurodevelopmental disorders like autism.'

Whitebread's recent research has involved developing a play-based approach to supporting children's writing. 'Many primary school children find writing difficult, but we showed in a previous study that a playful stimulus was far more effective than an instructional one.' Children wrote longer and better-structured stories when they first played with dolls representing characters in the story. In the latest study, children first created their story with Lego*, with similar results. 'Many teachers commented that they had always previously had children saying they didn't know what to write about. With the Lego building, however, not a single child said this through the whole year of the project.'

Whitebread, who directs PEDAL, trained as a primary school teacher in the early 1970s, when, as he describes, 'the teaching of young children was largely a quiet backwater, untroubled by any serious intellectual debate or controversy.' Now, the landscape is very different, with hotly debated topics such as school starting age.

'Somehow the importance of play has been lost in recent decades. It's regarded as something trivial, or even as something negative that contrasts with "work". Let's not lose sight of its benefits, and the fundamental contributions it makes to human achievements in the arts, sciences and technology. Let's make sure children have a rich diet of play experiences.'

⛔ CÂU HỎI:

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?
In boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

1. Children with good self-control are known to be likely to do well at school later on.
2. The way a child plays may provide information about possible medical problems.
3. Playing with dolls was found to benefit girls’ writing more than boys’ writing.
4. Children had problems thinking up ideas when they first created the story with Lego.
5. People nowadays regard children’s play as less significant than they did in the past.

(Trích Cam 14)

⛔ HIGHLIGHT TỪ VỰNG

Possibility (n): Khả năng
Self-control (n): Tự kiểm soát
Toddler (n): Trẻ mới biết đi
Pre-schooler (n): Trẻ nhỏ tuổi
Unfamiliar (adj): Không quen thuộc
Facilitate (v): Tạo điều kiện cho
Diagnosis (n): Chẩn đoán
Autism (n): Tự kỷ
Approach (n): Phương pháp
Stimulus (n): Sự kích thích
Serious (adj): Nghiêm túc
Debate (v): Tranh luận
Trivial (adj): Tầm thường
Fundamental (adj): Cơ bản
Contribution (n): Sự đóng góp

Các bạn làm đề nhé, cô chia sẻ đáp án dưới cmt nha!

In the coming days, I'll be sharing more on early childhood development-- helpful tools, fun activities, and insight on the whys and hows of behaviour and learning.
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This evening, I'd like to share why Music Learning is important-- not merely as an end in itself, but even more so as a means for a child to development holistically. The body of research is continually growing, and I could talk for hours on the specifics of language acquisition, body awareness, emotional regulation, etc. that music supports in the developing child 😆 Yes, music is powerful, even for an infant who is a few weeks' old 🙂
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Here is an article I wrote in 2016 which was initially published in @playtimeshk magazine. It merely scratches the surface, but I wrote it to support the growing movement of bringing #arts into #education. There's a lot more to unpack in each sphere of development, and I enjoy sharing this in the workshops we run for parents and teachers. We'll probably need to wait a few months before the next face-to-face workshop, but in the meantime, let's stay connected online 🙂
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Article: https://www.baumhaus.com.hk/musicandkids/2017/7/20/the-benefits-of-music-for-child-development
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#BaumhausHK #KindermusikHK #EarlyChildhoodEducation #ChildDevelopment #MusicEducation #ArtsEducation #ArtsInEducation #CriselConsunji #WholeChildLearning #PlaybasedLearning #LetChildrenPlay #CommeMaman #SophieRouillon
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Special thanks to @CommeMaman for the outfits on the vibrant Edwina & Lily 🙂 Photo at @baumhaus_hk by @sophierouillon88