CHCPR510A: Design, implement and evaluate programs and care routines for children
Design and implement programs to enhance development of children
Contents
Gather information about each child’s development to inform the program and routines 3
Develop and implement child-centred programs that aim to extend children’s experiences and develop their self-help skills 4
Strategies to widen children’s experiences 4
Helping children develop self-help skills through a routine 5
Develop and implement programs and routines to foster all aspects of children’s development in a holistic way and support smooth transitions 6
Programming for individual children 6
Ensure programs provide for capabilities, interests, emerging skills and backgrounds of children who attend the service 9
Diverse resources 9
Ensure all resources required for program are identified and available at the required time 11
Develop a flexible daily timetable, incorporating developmental opportunities, routines and transition experiences 12
Accommodating children’s rhythms and timings in a routine 12
Provisions and their role in planning daily routines 14
Appendix 1: Individual family service plan models 16
Gather information about each child’s development to inform the program and routines
We have looked at strategies for gathering information on the program from the major stakeholders. Other information that will be helpful for programming is information on the child’s family and backgrounds.
Children are individuals and all have unique characteristics and needs, this also includes identical twins. In order to continue to build an understanding of the children in the service we need to consider each child as an individual in relation to their family and social context.
Factors that will influence how children are cared for in the service include:
• home environment
• family lifestyle and composition
• social relationships and environment
• cultural and language background
• peers, friendships and caregivers
• child-rearing practices.
The more information a service can gather about a child and their background the easier it will be to provide care for the child.
The most effective methods for gathering information before the child starts care and at the start of care are enrolment forms and interviews and an Individual Family Service Plan (IFSP) which is particularly useful with families from diverse backgrounds.
Most enrolment forms will gather basic information such as names, parents, addresses, occupations, developmental history, care needs, medical requirements and history and may even gather simple information on the child’s likes and interests.
An IFSP will allow you to discuss specific needs with the parents and address requests for caregiving.
In Appendix 1 you will find some model IFSPs.
Activity 1
Develop and implement child-centred programs that aim to extend children’s experiences and develop their self-help skills
In children’s services, we strive to ensure that whatever we do is child-centred. Pause and reflect on what the concept ‘child-centred’ means. Did you say that it is about developing and supporting children?
In your studies and experiences working with children, you would probably have come across many ways in which we can develop and support children so that they can thrive in all the development domains and, in the process, grow up into individuals with a sense of identity, emotionally healthy, caring, and respectful of others.
Let us look at one way of supporting children—ie, widening their experiences so that they can grow to become individuals with a love of learning.
Strategies to widen children’s experiences
Reflect on the scenario blow.
Blake, 4, on visiting his aunt in the country was fascinated by the grasshoppers. He was given a bug catcher and encouraged to collect some (he is reminded to treat them carefully and to let them go later). Off he went. After collecting some grasshoppers in the dusty and drought-stricken garden where most things were brown, he was found busily placing the grasshoppers into a bowl of water 9the dog’s bowl).
When asked what he was doing, he said he was washing them because they were dirty. Blake had only seen green grasshoppers and was putting his knowledge of their colour (same as the dirt) and that you wash things that are dirty.
After rescuing the grasshoppers from their bath, Blake’s aunt talked to him about their colour. Why do you think they’re brown? They gathered some books on insects and looked at camouflage and how animals and insects are often the colour of their environment to protect them from predators.
This reminds me of a three-year-old girl who had placed four newborn kittens into a suitcase. When asked why she had done that, she said that it was to keep them safe and warm. Little did she know that the poor kittens could suffocate. As caregivers, we are educators. We would take (grab) the opportunity to explain about how the kittens (like us) need to breathe.
You probably know of incidents similar to these, where a caregiver is an educator and takes every opportunity to widen the child’s experiences. Children are teachers—they can teach us what their interests are and we can take their lead.
Activity 2
Children as teachers
Follow children’s lead and we can discover new and exciting things—from a child’s perspective.
Activity 3
Helping children develop self-help skills through a routine
The development of the children’s self-help skills—do you know what stage this relates to in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? It is the fourth level of the pyramid, which is about the need to feel competent and capable and our entitlement to self-esteem.
Here are some ideas on how to encourage children's self-help skills:
• Involve the children in the daily routines as much as is practical.
• Ask children to volunteer to help prepare for main events such as meal times and rest time.
• Ask children if they would like to help you to set tables or make up beds, to set up equipment, etc.
Remember: The more the children are encouraged to participate the more likely they are to progress through Maslow's pyramid.
Activity 4
Activity 5
The more children are encouraged to participate, the more likely they will progress through Maslow’s pyramid.
Develop and implement programs and routines to foster all aspects of children’s development in a holistic way and support smooth transitions
Programming for individual children
Think of the children you work with (if you are already working in a children’s centre) or think of siblings in the families you know. It is easy to see that children are individuals—with their individual likes dislikes, needs, temperaments and strengths and interests.
Program for individual children
How do you program for groups, bearing in mind that each child in every group is an individual? We first need to gather information about individual children so we can understand how their needs and interests differ from those of others—and how they converge.
Activity 6
Program for groups
Activity 7
Daily routine
Reflect on what you know about planning care routines (from your work experience or from what you’ve read or studied).
Think about how a routine structures the day to enable a smooth flowing and predictable day. A good program will also have some routine built into it to provide a framework on which to operate much in the same way our skeleton provides a framework for our bodies. It is not obvious but holds everything together.
How do you view the way in which daily routines are related to programming? A program is the ‘big picture’. Daily routine is one way in which a program is implemented.
Program during routine times
We cannot program without taking into account the daily routine of the room and the service—this should support the program rather than the program being dictated by the routine.
A daily routine needs to be flexible to fit a program’s philosophy. For example, the daily routine needs to allow children to continue a provision they are engrossed and postpone morning tea for a little later.
Incorporating transition times
Transition time refers to that time when children move from one part of a daily routine to another, for example, when they move from outdoor play time to music time. Transition time is something we consider when programming. For example, in our program, we take into consideration that some children may not want to stop what they have been doing and move on to another part of the routine. If one of the cornerstones of our program is flexibility, how do we handle such a situation? What strategies do we use to ensure that transitions are smooth and children are happy?
Incorporating the outdoor program
Planning for outdoors is important just as planning for indoors is but unfortunately, many services neglect to plan effectively for what equipment to put out and little thought is given to the unique learning opportunities the outdoors present.
Here are some good examples of outdoor areas:
A water experience /
A camping experience
Ensure programs provide for capabilities, interests, emerging skills and backgrounds of children who attend the service
Resources and the learning experiences they are part of provide children with learning opportunities—as such they too play the role of a teacher. We need to provide a wide range of resources in the room and they need to be open-ended resources that will provoke curiosity and learning.
The planning of resources for experiences are integral to programming—in fact, there needs to a space on our programming format so resources can be listed. Remember to use community resources. Develop a list or resource database to assist planning. In particular, include people within the community, service staff and families. Also, take a close look at the physical resources available in the service and consider how they can be adapted or modified for use in a number of ways. Remember that children improvise with what they have and use resources in innovative ways.
Experiences and resources should be selected on the basis of a number of criteria:
• Do they support and develop children’s identities?
• Do they develop competence, self-esteem and confidence in children? Children who are confident will respond to challenges more positively.
• Do they allow for a number of different ability levels so a child can make an attempt at a level they feel comfortable with?
You will probably think of other criteria. Below are more criteria, this time focusing on diversity.
Diverse resources
Always think about the impact of every resource you choose in terms of the messages conveyed to the children and families using the service. Remember that as caregivers we continually build on our understanding of the backgrounds of service users and we make sure that our resources reflect diversity from the local community, thus creating for the children a feeling of familiarity.
Remember to always be inclusive and not to marginalise anyone or send subtle messages about one group being better than another—be aware of what messages you are sending to boys or girls, children from various cultural backgrounds, children of different economic backgrounds, children with additional needs, children with disabilities and children from different family structures. Are you (or the resources and experiences you are providing) making them feel unwanted, not as good, odd or ‘abnormal’? Or are you teaching everyone to value difference and diversity?
Below are a few guidelines on inclusive practice and the use of diverse resources. If you have completed studies in inclusive practices, you will find this to be an opportunity to revise. If you are working in childcare, take this opportunity to reflect on practices at work.
• Use authentic materials—real, everyday resources not stereotypical ones.
• Ensure resources cover all areas within the program not just a few photos, a couple of bilingual books and a few multicultural dolls or pairs of chopsticks.
• Avoid tourist or token approaches, eg, a week for a specific ethnic or cultural group. Instead integrate diversity into everyday experiences and routines. Adapt routines to reflect varying cultural needs of children and families.
• Diverse resources should be easily identified in the service and available all the time, not just brought out of the storeroom for special occasions like accreditation.
Resources need to:
• portray realistic images of people who are like the children in the service as well as introducing people who are different to broaden their knowledge and experience
• show diverse physical characteristics, including children with a disability
• reflect the diverse range of families and family lifestyles
• challenge gender roles
• challenge cultural stereotypes
• reflect children with additional needs
• reflect the everyday lives of users and community members
• include languages other than English, even if there are no children with other languages in the service
• include some stereotypical resources to trigger discussion.
Remember that appropriate resources and experiences alone do not constitute good quality care. Needless to say, we, as caregivers, play a critical role in supporting children’s development and well-being—children respond to us if care about them and value and respect them.
Ensure all resources required for program are identified and available at the required time
Of course spontaneity is great and helps develop children’s imagination, but for a planned program you should ensure that all the resources are available and in good condition when the children need them. For example, for the music program you should ensure that there are enough musical instruments to go around so that no child misses out. Or suppose that today you are going to use scarfs as a prop in the movement session. The music has been chosen and is ready to be played, a placed cleared and you discover that all the scarfs have been tied together to be used as a decoration in the home corner. A little forethought and preparation would have been all that was needed to ensure that the resources were ready at the required time.
Develop a flexible daily timetable, incorporating developmental opportunities, routines and transition experiences
Accommodating children’s rhythms and timings in a routine
Most of us feel comfortable and secure when we have routines that are maintained. We have discussed in the forum choices about what we like to eat and when we like to eat, to rest when we feel like it and so on.