Positive Relationships: Baby room – Who cares?

The often disregarded baby room was the focus of a project on how young children are cared for, as Dr Kathy Goouch and Dr Sacha Powell explain.

There seems to be a lack of research information about the processes and practices of early childhood education and care for children from birth to three (David et al, 2003). This gap in research knowledge is particularly evident in relation to the specific field of work with babies from birth to 12 months, in varying forms of daycare.

Although the increase in maternity leave seems to have resulted in a drop in the numbers of very young babies being looked after outside the home, Unicef (2009) has reported that around 18 per cent of babies under 12 months in England are in some form of daycare provision; and this is often for a large part of the working week. Accordingly, we have focused on exactly that age group in the Baby Room Project, our latest research initiative.

USE IT OR LOSE IT

With all the advances in technology and the new use of neuro-imaging procedures, much more is now known – thanks to research by neuroscientists – about brain activity, growth and development. This is increasingly useful in informing the kinds of care and support necessary for healthy babies.

What seems to be clear from this kind of research is that babies’ brains are incredibly active and thirsty for interaction and activities – which in turn fosters further learning and brain development (David et al, 2003).

As we develop, our brains are said to work on the ‘use-it-or-lose-it’ principle (Greenfield, 2000). That is, as with any other muscle, our brains strengthen with activity or weaken without. Significantly, we now know that the brains of babies are shaped by experience.

This early stage of brain growth, from birth, and the experiences and encounters that influence it, often take place in out-of-home settings, in nurseries and daycare and in designated rooms in those settings – in other words, the baby room.

The practitioners working with the babies in their care have a huge professional responsibility to do so in loving and appropriate ways. Yet in our research we have found that those practitioners are often overlooked in relation to support and professional-development opportunities.

NATTERING ON THE NING

In our project, we are working with a small group of local baby room practitioners to look at what they are doing with babies and to understand why they might be practising in particular ways in their settings. This group comes together for development sessions, but has also agreed to observations being carried out and to short films being made of its interactions with babies.

As the project progresses, discussions about, for example, sleep or nappy-changing practices have become lively and engaging. To further help the practitioners swap ideas and question their own and others’ ways of working, we have provided them with a netbook and created a social networking site (or ‘Ning’) for them to chat online to each other.

A key feature of this project is to provide opportunities for our colleagues working in baby rooms not only to look inward at their own practice but also to look outward and around, for ideas, affirmation, challenge and research evidence.

SHANGHAI SYNERGY

The project is providing a mass of interesting data, but to support our own knowledge development – and hopefully to provide a practitioner network link there – we have also been able to visit Shanghai, China, to look at some innovative family support practices with parents, grandparents and babies in a family centre that opened in 2005.

We took with us film of one of our settings and information about the project and its Ning to share with our Chinese colleagues. In turn, we were offered unlimited access to the family centre, with and without families, and to some in-service seminars with practitioners across the region.

Seeking out other examples of practice from elsewhere in the world is enormously useful, as it helps us reflect on similarities and differences and also on why we practise in the way that we do. For example, with the new emphasis on the use of toys and resources made from natural materials, our colleagues in Shanghai were interested in the fact that colour seemed to be missing from the baby rooms.

This kind of practitioner reflection provides the perfect opportunity to question our motives and the rationale for developments that sometimes emerge from research and sometimes from other influences.

Opportunities to observe and learn from colleagues across international borders are rare, but when they occur there is much to ponder, for example in relation to cultural and policy differences. With our colleagues in the project’s nurseries, the Shanghai experience is one we are hoping to frequently revisit via the video material – but also to build upon when we arrange a reciprocal visit to our own settings in the near future.

STAND BACK AND REFLECT

Our Baby Room Project is nearing the end of its year-long funding and we are beginning to analyse and report on the findings. The most significant element of our learning is that the project has confirmed that while we know that practitioners working in nurseries find it difficult to access professional development during the working week, those in baby rooms seem to be, and feel themselves to be, a completely overlooked community.

Baby room practitioners, in common with all of those caring for young children, work extremely hard and for long hours. In some very small nurseries there may be one adult caring alone for three babies for most of the working day – an enormous mental and physical challenge.

Opportunities to stand back and reflect on practice are extremely rare and indeed frequently non-existent. And yet this sort of reflection is crucial to professional development, to careful consideration of all elements of practice, to the questioning of routines and to the professional engagement of practitioners in their everyday responsibilities.

One of the practitioners in our project talked about how it had helped her to ‘helicopter above’ the work she did with babies to better see what was happening and why. Another spoke about how it had caused her to think about the ‘good babies’ and how little time she perhaps gave them compared to others who were more demanding in a number of ways.

A member of the group raised the point that parents, mothers, were handing over to them the ‘most precious thing in their world’ and what a huge responsibility it was. Some practitioners talked about parents who were worried that the practitioner was too young to trust with their babies and how that made the practitioner feel.

On our Ning, the social network site, many practitioners have described ‘A day in the life of a baby room practitioner’ and compared and contrasted routines and rituals; someone wryly commented that everybody had to do the same things and yet they did them differently.

Conversations have begun on the Ning about the storage of breast milk, observations and the demands of record keeping, sleep routines, child protection and practitioner protection. Links to other useful sites are facilitated through the Ning and everyone can contribute to the discussions and has equal access.

One thing we have learned is the enormous need for this group to talk to one another – to share understandings and worries, to tell how constraints can be overcome, to gain a perspective on the demands of policy, parents, managers, local authorities and Ofsted – all with a stake in the success of baby rooms.

Significantly, we have learned how important it is for our project group to feel the enormous importance of the professional responsibility they hold. We believe that it is through access to professional development programmes, properly designed and managed to allow practice, research and policy to be effectively mediated and considered, that baby room practice can achieve the high status it deserves.

Dr Kathy Goouch is senior lecturer in education and Dr Sacha Powell is a principal research fellow in the department of educational research, Canterbury Christ Church University. The Baby Room Project was funded by the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation.

http://www.nurseryworld.co.uk/news/bulletin/NurseryWorldUpdate/article/1025160/?DCMP=EMC-CONNurseryWorldUpdate

Enabling Environments: Creativity – The Midas Touch

The Midas Touch Project, a Liverpool-based transformative learning programme for very young children and their families and carers, aims to enhance children’s and adults’ sense of awe and wonder in their everyday lives. Using recycled, ‘ordinary’ objects as tools of play, work and learning, the Midas Touch programme uncovers the unusual within the usual, the strange in the familiar and the beauty within the unsuspecting.

Its approach relies on the metamorphosis of recycled, discarded and ‘worthless’ objects, their incorporation into challenging learning experiences and the documentation of children’s learning for its affects and effects.

Midas Touch is based on an innovative project called REmida, based in the north Italian city of Reggio Emilia, whereby an early years practitioner (pedagogista) and an artist (atelierista) work collaboratively in different ways to enhance children’s learning and promote the idea that waste materials can be resources. The Midas Touch team also wanted to adapt some key principles from the Reggio Emilia approach when rolling out its programme. These include:

Children must have some control over the direction of their learning
Children must be able to learn through experiences of touching, moving, listening, seeing, hearing
Children have a relationship with other children and with material items in the world that children must be allowed to explore
Give children endless ways to express themselves.
Another vital factor of Midas Touch is the role of the adult, whether that be a practitioner or a parent/carer. The role of the adult within Midas Touch is to be the listener, the observer and a compass.

Through Midas Touch, children are able to explore interests via processes, but this does not necessarily lead to an end product. The adult can listen to children’s interests, views and opinions and act as a compass by guiding their learning through appropriate questions, which will not impose the adult’s own views and opinions, but extend the child’s learning.

There is no hierarchy within Midas Touch; it is an opportunity for the practitioner and the child to go on a learning journey together that will lead to the opportunity to engage in sustained shared thinking. This gives the adult a better understanding of the children in their care by clarifying children’s interests, opinions and schemas of play – which will in turn help to better support a child’s learning.

CONSIDERED DECISIONS

Midas Touch was set up as a four-week pilot this March in St Helens, Merseyside, with the hope of becoming a sustainable resource eventually. Seven different settings across St Helens, including children’s centres, private day nurseries and nursery and reception classes, attended the project on a weekly basis.

All decisions were made after consultation with Warwickshire’s Enviro Arts Vision for Education (Weave) in Leamington Spa, House of Objects Creative Recycling in North Tyneside and, most importantly, the children and families in the St Helens area.

Funding the pilot was an initiative named Find Your Talent, a national scheme to encourage children and young people to participate in cultural activities, both in and out of school. The Liverpool City Region pilot is one of ten that was run nationally to support education settings, children and young people to participate in their local cultural offer.

I was seconded as an early years consultant for this project from my role as early years professional at Thatto Heath Children’s Centre, St Helens. I had been involved with this project and Find Your Talent from the very early stages.

During the project, I took responsibility for the early years practice and ensured that the experience was open-ended and creative for all the children involved. I advised, supported and worked alongside the artist and co-delivered sessions to the children. I also gave advice and set out the essential outcomes of the project for children’s centres and schools, based on local priorities.

The rest of the team consisted of:

Nick Owen, project leader. Nick is responsible for driving the project forward, managing the budget and timescales and championing the project. He liaised with press and marketing teams and the recycling department of the council, with support from the Find Your Talent co-ordinator for St Helens. Nick is director of Gloucester-based sports and cultural body, Aspire Trust.

Claire Weetman, project manager. Visual artist Claire supports Nick in managing and driving the project forward. She co-ordinated the participation of schools and children’s centres, with support from the Find Your Talent area co-ordinator, Nicola Clarke. She was also instrumental in readying the venue for the project delivery.

Michiko Fujii, artist. Michiko worked with me to develop creative opportunities for the children. She collaborated with Claire to source suitable materials and was responsible for the preparation of the materials prior to use.

ESSENTIAL REFLECTION

Planning, reflection and documentation were essential elements of the four-week pilot project, as well as linking this all back to the EYFS. Each week there was a loose theme within our planning, relating to the objects used. These four themes were: plastics; wood and metal; natural materials; and blacks and whites.

However, the majority of the planning was emergent and reflective, looking at observations and reflections from the previous week. This meant that we introduced materials to extend learning and interests, such as a variety of mark-making media and real tools.

All sessions covered the themes and areas of learning of the EYFS in a holistic way and activities were all child-led. Children’s learning was observed and documented in various ways, such as taking photographs, recording videos and making written observations. This documentation was used to enhance learning opportunities while at the Midas Touch, but was also made into books and wall displays to share with children, parents/carers, practitioners and the wider community.

Practitioner and parent/carer feedback about the Midas Touch project included the following comments:

What have you noticed? ‘Children really had to THINK to solve problems to make what they wanted.’
What have you learnt? ‘Why do we spend lots of money on expensive resources and things such as dressing-up clothes when children have such vivid imaginations and are so creative? Practitioners and parents/carers need to see this project to realise the importance of developing their children’s skills in this way.’
‘Everyday materials + Freedom = Learning.’
What was important? ‘Not to have any preconceived ideas. The children’s imaginations take us on a wonderful journey.’ ‘To step back and offer support where required. To know when to be quiet. Allowing children to be children and show individual talents.’
Our partnership with St Helens Council will continue and our next step is to resource a feasibility study to identify a local venue and management structure to enable the centre to become a long-term initiative for children in St Helens and Merseyside.

I feel strongly that this opportunity for learning has been irreplacable for the children who were part of the Midas Touch. It is a place where each individual child’s interests take them on a journey, free from boundaries – a place where a sheet of material can lead to the most imaginative role-play I have ever observed, where a plastic bottle can be transformed into a musical instrument and where children are free to truly explore play with real objects and real tools, free from any pre-conceived ideas.

Laura Grindley was formerly early years professional for Thatto Heath Children’s Centre, St Helens, Merseyside and is now senior children’s development and learning officer for Whiston Area Children’s Centres.

http://www.nurseryworld.co.uk/news/bulletin/NurseryWorldUpdate/article/1025156/?DCMP=EMC-CONNurseryWorldUpdate

Yoga for Special Needs Kids: Stretching Mind and Body

When my daughter Hannah was diagnosed with hemiparesis, which is a mild case of cerebral palsy, I wondered: What can I do to help her? How active should she be? And how can I not be overprotective of Hannah, especially when she goes off to school?

The answer seemed to be involving my daughter in as many activities as I could. As a result, Hannah was signed up for swimming, gym and music classes all by her first birthday. My daughter also had eight hours of physical and occupational therapy each week.

The brain is so plastic. And how active I remained with Hannah’s treatment before she turned 24 months would impact how successful her recovery would be. I was on a mission.

Then I found yoga. When a class with a few participants got cancelled, I hired the instructor to lead the lessons out of my home. At 15 months, Hannah started to crawl by incorporating the rocking table and downward dog poses in her movements. At 20 months, Hannah progressed to trying poses such as mountain, squats and elevator. Every day Hannah would get the movements more and more.

I saw such a difference in my daughter’s development that we asked the instructor to come over three times per week. Meanwhile, Hannah continued to take her usual classes and have her weekly eight hours of therapy sessions. But the yoga instruction was unique in that it was playful and enjoyable for Hannah, prompting her to consider her time with the instructor as a playdate.

When the instructor chose to pursue other interests, it encouraged me to become certified. I first took a teacher training course at a Manhattan studio for children’s yoga, followed by training and certification working with children with special needs.

The best part of the training? Not only did I learn more about Hannah’s yoga practice and how it enabled her to become increasingly aware of her body and personal space, but I was able to share this with other families, as well. Inspired by this journey, I opened a yoga studio for children on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. This led me to share the benefits of yoga for children in more than five locations throughout New York City.

Four Exercises to Develop Body & Mind
Cross the mid-line. Crossing the mid-line enhances brain development. An example of this is to sit with your child, having him or her rub one’s hands together. Once the child’s hands get warm, have the child cross hands and touch opposite shoulders. This allows the child to cross the mid-line and make new neurological pathways for further brain development. Motivate your child to do this over and over again in novel ways, such as by crossing over to touch one’s knees, toes and ears.

Use the eyes. As your child grows, he or she looks at things in new ways. Once the child begins to look at books and track words, the child’s depth perception develops. While this occurs, it is crucial for your child to build the muscles behind the eyes. One method of doing this is by moving a toy the child likes in different directions, asking the child to follow the toy with his or her eyes. Another method is snapping your fingers up and down and then right to left, while your child trails the movements. Either way, have your child watch the object move at least ten times in each direction. This helps build the little muscles supporting the child’s eyes and lessens the chances for glasses.

Do core poses. As all of a person’s limbs are extensions from the core of the body, it’s essential to develop the core. Building a strong core enables a child to balance oneself both physically and mentally. Poses that support the core are the dolphin pose and boat pose. Do these and other poses with your children, allowing you each to build your strength and bond.

Sing a song. While singing to a child can help the young yogini accomplish a difficult pose, it can be especially encouraging for children who are late talkers. If for any reason you find your child not communicating, find a book that you know the child enjoys and sing each word in the story. Take the time to sing the words one by one and change your tone, emphasizing that a new word is being sung. Soon your child will be doing poses in utter relaxation, not even realizing a stronger core will result and likely a better grasp of language.

Kami Evans, the founder and an instructor at Elahi Yoga, became a certified children’s yoga instructor through Karma Kids Yoga and a certified yoga instructor for kids with special needs through Every Kids Yoga, which are both located in Manhattan. Working with her daughter and seeing remarkable improvements through yoga exercise has inspired Evans to continue with the practice and help other children to gain self-confidence and have fun through yoga. Visit www.elahiyoga.com or call (800)584-7940 to learn more about Elahi Yoga.

http://www.opposingviews.com/i/yoga-for-special-needs-kids-stretching-mind-and-body

Brain Grows Quickest in Areas Where Apes, Humans Vary: Study

The regions of the human brain that grow most rapidly during infancy and childhood are nearly identical to the regions that are most different between humans and monkeys, new research has found.
The discovery was made by U.S. researchers who scanned the brains of full-term infants and healthy young adults in order to assess the differences in brain scans between the two age groups — part of a larger study on the effects of premature birth on brain development.

The study found that the cerebral cortex — the wrinkled area on the surface of the brain that is responsible for higher mental functions such as language and reasoning — grows in an uneven way. While every region expands as the brain matures, one-quarter to one-third of the cerebral cortex expands about twice as much as other cortical areas during normal development.
The findings were published online July 12 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Through comparisons between humans and macaque monkeys, my lab previously showed that many of these high-growth regions are expanded in humans as a result of recent evolutionary changes that made the human brain much larger than that of any other primate. The correlation isn’t perfect, but it’s much too good to put down to chance,” senior author David Van Essen, Edison professor and head of the anatomy and neurobiology department at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, said in a university news release.

The researchers are now conducting scans of the brains of premature babies at birth and years later in an effort to learn more about how premature birth affects brain development. They also want to explore the role that structural problems in the brain may play in conditions such as autism, attention-deficit disorder and reading disabilities.

http://www.sciencemagnews.com/brain-grows-quickest-in-areas-where-apes-humans-vary-study.html

Mum matters most in the eyes of their children

The special lifelong bond that children have with their mothers may have its roots in how our brains react when we see our mothers’ faces, according to scientists.

Using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machines, the researchers measured the brain activity of volunteers as they were shown photographs of their parents, strangers and celebrities.

Mothers are said to hold a special lifelong place in their children’s hearts, but it also appears they have a unique significance in their brains too.

Scientists have discovered that when adults look at their mothers’ faces, it triggers a stronger response in the brain than when they look at pictures of strangers – or even of their fathers.

Using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machines, the researchers measured the brain activity of volunteers as they were shown photographs of their parents, strangers and celebrities.
When images of the participants’ mothers were shown to them, the scientists found that it “lit up” key areas, associated with recognition and emotion.

The findings suggest that mothers produce a complex and lasting emotional and cognitive response in their children’s brain, as a result of the bonding experience that takes place between them and their children, as babies.

Scientists believe the findings shed new light on the extent to which humans experience “imprinting” – a phenomenon observed in many birds and animals in which youngsters form very strong attachments to the first creature they see after being born.

As a result, the youngsters follow their mother around and can rapidly learn from her characteristics and behaviour, which are said to be “imprinted” on them.

Human babies do not undergo such rapid imprinting, but many scientists believe the bond between mother and child can have crucial implications in later life and even into adulthood.

The new study, which is reported in the scientific journal Brain and Cognition, involved 20 volunteers with an average age of 35.

Dr Marie Arsalidou, from the University of Toronto, in Canada, who carried out the research along with academics from the University of Winchester, in the UK, said: “Differential activity to mothers’ faces may be attributable to greater exposure to one’s mothers face during critical childhood years.”

She added: “The fact that this activation is even seen in adults who have lived away from their parents for many years does suggest that it is certainly a very long-term effect.”

Fathers faces produced a strong response in an area deep inside the brain known to contribute to feelings of affection but failed to produce anywhere near as much brain activity when compared to the volunteers’ mothers.

Celebrities faces prompted far less brain activity than images of parents, but greater activity than in strangers faces, mainly due to the recognition and memories those faces induced.

Professor Ann Buchanan, director of the Oxford Centre for Research into Parenting and Children at Oxford University, said: “This brain research is giving a physical understand for things we know emotionally.
“It seems like the brain is born like a disk that has been formatted but nothing has been put into it.

“This crucial interaction between the primary carer, which is usually the mother, is crucial for brain development and later emotional development.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/7969398/Mum-matters-most-in-the-eyes-of-their-children.html

Tweens get savvy with gadgets

Tweens are more technologically savvy and count the internet as a source of happiness, research shows. Today’s six- to 12-year-olds are laden with gadgets their older siblings could only have dreamed about – two-thirds of them own mobile phones and iPods.

Almost half of the 1200 children who completed the Tween Tracker survey have Facebook profiles, despite being under the site’s minimum age of 13.

Two-thirds reported surfing the web without supervision.

Social media expert Laurel Papworth describes Facebook as the online equivalent of a “keep out, I mean it!” sign on the bedroom door, allowing kids to shut parents out while sharing with friends – an enticing prospect at an age when they are developing their own identities.

Parents failed to “make good arguments why one web page is better than another” and why internet use needed to be monitored.

“Managing how they connect is a better option than saying ‘don’t connect at all’,” she said.

She recommended moving the computer out of the bedroom and into the loungeroom where parents could keep an eye on online activity.

More than a virtual playground, the internet is also a vast information resource, exposing children to almost limitless data.

Unsurprisingly, the Tween Tracker study – commissioned by Pacific Magazines – found the age group had a lot on its mind. The environment, disease, poverty and terrorism were common concerns.

“Uncle Google responds to every request for information overheard on TV and at the adult dinner table,” Ms Papworth said.

This was a positive development as it allowed children to form more balanced views.

“These kids seem less depressed,” she said. “Perhaps rather than being preached at how bad the world is, they see more people changing it . . . a chorus of voices speaking out, rather than just the bad news in passive mode.”

Despite the high importance of socialising online, most tweens still prefer to read books and magazines than surf the web.

Three tweens who spoke to The Sun-Herald said they all used technology for fun.

Lola Spence, 7, and Sinead Leahy, 8, said they used it every day and spent up to two hours a day playing computer games and using social networking sites like Habbo.

They also believe they have more gadgets than their older siblings did at the same age. Of her 12-year-old sister, Lola said: “Georgia wouldn’t have had an iPod, DS [game console], computer and TV as well.”

But Sofia Sabados, 7, defied the trend. She spends only 15 minutes at a time on her mother’s laptop and prefers outdoor play over computer games. She has a DS console but stopped using it after a month when the novelty wore off.

“We bought it for her because of peer pressure”, her mother, Zoe, said. “After the initial excitement wore off, there was no interest.”

Sofia likes reading “hard, challenging books” and learning about science”.

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/tweens-get-savvy-with-gadgets-20100828-13×1e.html

Enabling Environments: ICT – Switch on

ICT equipment designed for children with special educational needs can be the best choice for general provision too, says Stuart Pattison.

Where can you find great equipment to help with ICT development? The answer, perhaps, surprisingly, is in the section of the catalogues marked Special Educational Needs.

I work with more than 100 schools providing ICT access for children with special needs. This involves assessing individual challenges and then supplying the necessary equipment to enable them to fully access the curriculum.

I was recently called in to help a local nursery. A child couldn’t use the class computer despite being desperate to do so.

A Big Keys keyboard and Tiny Mouse were provided. When I returned a week later, I arrived to find that the keyboard and mouse that had previously been attached to the computer were tucked away in a cupboard, as every single child had switched to using the access device.

It became obvious that there is huge untapped potential for special needs access equipment to be used to help early learners. This covers not only hardware but also software and even toys and websites.

SWITCH

One of the earliest forms of interaction in ICT is through using a simple switch. Switch software not only develops ICT skills but also helps to develop children’s understanding of the world. Special needs software that has been designed to help children interact better within their world can also fulfil the same role in a nursery setting.

A simple switch-operated toy (such as Droopy the Snoring Dog, available from Inclusive Technology) can be linked to the early learning goals and it can help motivate a child to interact with a switch, developing their ICT skills. To make this more relevant, a battery switch adaptor (available for £9) can be added, which turns a favourite toy into a valuable resource.

The SwitchIT range of software offers many different topics (sport, wildlife, dinosaurs). The extremely useful SwitchIT Hygiene will help develop simple personal hygiene as well as switch skills. The great thing with this software is the fact that it can also be used on an interactive whiteboard or through a mouse and keyboard.

MOUSE

The next stage on from using a switch is to start interacting using a simple mouse. Regular mice are designed for adult hands, which makes them difficult for children to move around with confidence. A mouse adapted for smaller hands, such as ‘My First Mouse’ and ‘Mini Mouse’, are much easier to cope with. An additional benefit is that many have different colours for the right and left buttons.

For children who are not confident in using a mouse, there are tracker balls which can be rolled to help get the cursor in the right position. The ‘Big Track’ (BIGtrack Trackball) is a good example of this. These are also very durable, which we discovered when one boy went from the sandbox straight to it (although it did make a grinding sound for five days afterwards!)

KEYBOARD

The average keyboard has too many keys for your average child or some adults to cope with. Reducing the number of keys makes it much easier for the child to work on the computer. Big key keyboards are generally available for less than £50. These enable the child to find the key easier and press it much more easily.

They come in a variety of colour combinations and are arranged A-Z rather than the traditional QWERTY arrangement. The A-Z keys are helpful for teaching the alphabet, but transferring to a standard keyboard can present a challenge.

Also available as an alternative keyboard is the Intellikeys system. This is a flat board which can have different overlays placed on it. These can be made to any design, so a picture of Red Riding Hood can be used to help write a simple story by pressing different areas.

PROGRAMS

Many programs for children with special needs can be adapted for all early years children. In addition to the SwitchIT software, there are programs such as the cause and effect program ‘Big Bang’ and the Choose and Tell programs, which help with telling stories and making decisions.

ReacTickles is a program specifically designed for children with autistic spectrum disorders. It is a series of simple interfaces that react to touch in different ways, which work very well on an interactive whiteboard and are suitable at a very early age.

If you are on a tight budget, programs to adapt the software to your own particular need will have to be chosen carefully. SwitchIT Maker 2 and ChooseIT Maker 2 can be easily customised. The staff I have worked with praised these highly for their ease of use. MyBoard software is one of the best for this, as a huge number of screens can be produced. We worked very successfully with it, when the children picked their own toppings for a pizza.

ONLINE

Many online activities are also very good and, more importantly, free! The CBeebies website has areas specifically designed for using with switches. In addition, the website www.helpkidzlearn.co.uk offers excellent activities which are constantly updated, despite having a terrible name.

Special needs equipment is something that should be given serious consideration when trying to find resources as it is usually well-built, bright, cleverly thought out and designed specifically to help with early development – ticking just about every box for early years equipment!

Stuart Pattison is a teacher and co-ordinator for the North Lincolnshire ICT Access Library.

Further information

Big Keys Keyboard – www.keytools.co.uk/home.php or www.pcwb.co.uk
Tiny Mouse – www.Inclusive.co.uk
Droopy the Snoring Dog – www.Inclusive.co.uk
Battery switch adaptor – www.Inclusive.co.uk
Switch IT software – www.Inclusive.co.uk
My First Mouse – www.Inclusive.co.uk
Mini Mouse – www.amazon.co.uk
Big Track – www.keytools.co.uk
Intellikeys – www.Inclusive.co.uk
Big Bang – www.Inclusive.co.uk
Choose and Tell – www.Inclusive.co.uk
Reactickles – www.r-e-m.co.uk
SwitchIT Maker – www.Inclusive.co.uk
ChooseIT Maker – www.Inclusive.co.uk
MyBoard – www.Inclusive.co.uk
CBeebies – www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/grownups/about/specialneeds/physical_cbeebies.shtml

http://www.nurseryworld.co.uk/news/bulletin/NurseryWorldUpdate/article/1023817/?DCMP=EMC-CONNurseryWorldUpdate

Young children make more mistakes learning new words than parents expect

Learning new words is not always as easy for young children as parents may think, according to the results of a new study.

Research carried out by the Kent Child Development Unit at the University of Kent has found that five-year-olds often make mistakes when they are learning new words for actions.

Kirsten Abbot-Smith, a lecturer in developmental psychology who led the research, said the findings were surprising. ‘We know from other studies that by the age of two, children can use the order of words and word endings, such as “ing”, to help work out the meanings of new words for actions, at least when the objects involved are familiar.’

Around 100 five-year-olds were split into four study groups to examine the mechanisms children use to learn words. A researcher described a film clip to the children using a made-up phrase such as ’she is blicking it’, making it clear that ‘blicking’ referred to the action, not the object, for example a woman headbutting a bamboo candle holder on to a table.

Children were then shown two different clips and asked to choose which one showed the correct meaning of ‘blicking’.

One of the film pairs showed a different unfamiliar action – for example, the action was ‘hurling’ and not ‘headbutting’ – while another showed a different unfamiliar object, for example a CD rack and not a candle holder.

Dr Abbot-Smith said, ‘From their responses we know the children were guessing at the meaning of “blicking”, because half the time they chose the wrong clip. This could be because they thought blicking referred to the object, such as the candle holder, or it could be because they forgot the original action.’

However, children chose the correct meaning of ‘blicking’ when the action did not involve moving an object from one place to another but involved a repetitive action, such as a woman rolling the candle holder between her hands.

While most adults would automatically assume that in a phrase, ‘blicking’ refers to the action, not the object, children’s ability to learn that ‘blicking’ referred to the action was affected by the type of action in the clip.

But five-year-olds performed well in another study using different actions, perhaps because the actions were not as quick and one-off, Dr Abbot-Smith said.

‘We suspect that pre-school children may forget the specific details of some type of actions very quickly. Now we need to look at how much forgetting actually goes on.’

http://www.nurseryworld.co.uk/news/bulletin/NurseryWorldUpdate/article/1023795/?DCMP=EMC-CONNurseryWorldUpdate

Be a better parent – and improve your child’s mental health

Parents developing nurturing skills on pilot course report big drop in behavioural problems among their children

As a parent it can sometimes feel as if you are drowning in conflicting information about your child’s requirements; what they should be eating, what they should be learning. But there is one area where we might all like a little more help; how to improve parenting skills that can be of long-term benefit to their mental health.

One in 10 children in the UK suffers from a diagnosable mental health disorder, and mental health issues for young people are an increasingly urgent concern. Now a pilot project in Southwark, south London, has found that teaching parents skills and techniques to better care for their children is having impressive consequences. The Empowering Parents, Empowering Communities course offers training in parenting, then teaches the mothers and fathers how to pass on what they have learnt. The results, for families in one of the most deprived boroughs in the country – where children have an above average likelihood of mental health problems – are being described as “inspirational”.

Hunaida Osman took the original course at the Maudsley hospital and now teaches the techniques to other parents. “I was definitely the sort of parent who got angry easily and just shouted, ‘Stop that’,” she says. “I’ve got much better at explaining why I don’t want my children to do something, and at praising them when they do something right. And it’s been great for the parents I’ve taught too; for some families who are on a low income, living in crowded conditions, with children who are playing up, you really need a bit of help and support in the best ways to deal with those kids.”

Nicola Williams, another parent teaching the course, says those whose children have mental health issues have been particularly pleased. “There was one mother who’d had a lot of trouble with her son. She came along for a couple of sessions, but she didn’t have any faith in what the course could do for her. She didn’t really want to get involved in it at all.

“We gave her a handout which was about a really simple technique, using little mood faces to show what sort of mood you’re in; smiley faces if you’re happy, that sort of thing. And it was amazing. Her son used them when he got home from school every day, and she said just knowing what mood he was in made everything much simpler.”

Dr Crispin Day of the Institute of Psychiatry is evaluating the course as part of a long-term study. “About half the children whose parents are on the course have difficulties which would be equivalent to a diagnosed disorder, but the parents who go to the group are reporting that their children are showing a significant reduction in the severity of their behaviour problems.”

Day has been running several groups simultaneouslyand early results are promising. For example, when parents were asked to say how concerned they were about their children on a scale between one to 10, levels on average dropped from approximately five-and-a-half out of 10 to two-and-a-half. Parents also filled out the Eyburg child behaviour inventory, which gives a score indicating how likely it is that the child may need clinical help (a score of 127 and over); the average score of the attending group dropped from just above 125 to 106.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/aug/24/parents-improve-childrens-mental-health

Everybody benefits, but poor kids benefit the most

Sara Mead is a senior associate partner at Bellwether Education Partners, and specializes In early childhood education issues, especially pre-K through third grade. You can read more about her policy prescriptions for early education in her report, “A Next Social Contract for the Primary Years of Education,” and on her blog, Sara Mead’s Policy Notebook. We talked about the problems with current government policies regarding early childhood education, and how they can be remedied.

Q: When people like you and other early-ed people talk about high-quality preschool as opposed to normal or regular preschool or day care, what’s the distinction, and why does it matter?

A: The distinction between what we call preschool and early childhood education versus just child care is that preschool or early childhood education is a program that has the specific goal of helping kids learn so that they’re ready to succeed at school and beyond, whereas child care’s something that’s primarily supposed to help parents be able to work or go to school. And that doesn’t mean that childcare can’t be educational or that pre-K can’t provide child care, but it’s useful to think about what the purpose of the program is. So when we think, then, about what does it mean for preschool or child care to be high-quality, mostly it has to do with, and the research shows that this is what’s important for kids, the quality of the interactions between the adults and the children in the childcare setting or the preschool setting.

What you really want to look for and see is three things. One is an emotionally warm and nurturing climate. That’s something you want to see in either child care or preschool settings. The adults are caring for children, the children feel safe emotionally, they’re supporting children’s emotional development. That’s probably the easiest thing to find in settings. The second thing you want to see is instructional quality, and that, instructional quality sounds a lot like teachers sitting at a desk, and that’s not what we mean. What it really means to a large extent is that there are rich verbal interactions going on between adults and children, so there’s lots of talking, the adults ask children questions, they’re not questions that you can answer with a one word response, the children are being encouraged to talk and are also hearing rich language, and there’s a lot of that going on.

Related to that is appropriate early literacy support. There are lots of literacy materials around, the teachers are using them, they’re engaging children in pre-literacy in ways that are developmentally appropriate. To a lesser extent you also see some math concepts — how many numbers are here, is that a square or a triangle — and what color is this type things, as well as kids being exposed to concepts from other subjects, art, music, history and so forth.

The final thing in terms of dimensional quality involves classroom management and the quality of the setting. Is the classroom organized? How much time are the children spending in different types of activities? You don’t want to see children wandering around aimlessly or large amounts of time being spent on things like transitions between activities, lining up to go to the bathroom and so forth. You want to see a classroom arrangement, and a teacher who organizes things so that they’re getting more time doing rich educational activities.

Q: The current policy framework seems to be Head Start and then a bunch of patchwork state programs. If you had to summarize the problems and shortcomings of this approach, or things it’s doing well, what sort of things come to mind?

A: I would say there are problems in three dimensions. One is access. The percentage of children who are being served in programs that we would consider early childhood education or preschool is still a fairly small percentage relative to the need. Only about 35 percent of kids are served in either Head Start or pre-K. When you include parent-paid programs that number goes up closer to 60 or 70 percent for 4-year-olds. That is much lower for 3-year-olds. Of course, there’s differences by income. Affluent and poor kids are more likely to be in pre-K, but kids who are from working-class families are much less likely to be in those settings. They frequently need the same kind of supports as lower-income students need to be ready for school.

The second dimension of the problem is around quality, that even places saying they’re educational settings for kids, a lot of times they aren’t, necessarily. And the biggest issue there is probably around teacher quality. As I was saying before, rich verbal interaction and support for language development are so central to what you want kids to be experiencing that teachers who don’t have much in the way of education, they themselves may not have particularly strong language skills and, then, it’s difficult for them to deliver that kind of support for kids in those settings.

The third set of problems is around coordination and alignment. As you mentioned, we do have this sort of ad hoc system where there’s child-care programs, there’s parent-paid programs, there’s state pre-K programs, there’s Head Start, and these programs aren’t really coordinated with each other. They all have different eligibility requirements, they all have different funding levels and funding streams, they all have different quality standards. To some extent they have different goals, too.

Not only are those programs kind of a patchwork, but there’s very little connection between them and the public education system. So even if a child has a good pre-K experience or a good experience in Head Start, the information about where the child is doesn’t carry over to the kindergarten teacher, the curriculum may not be aligned, and so we’re missing out on an opportunity to really power through children’s development across that time frame by having all these gaps and disjunctures between different things.

Q: That brings me to a point you’ve made in a lot of the reports you’ve written about this, which is that we should be considering pre-K as part of a sequence going to third grade and trying to integrate that more at a school district level. That would obviously be a very big policy move for the country, especially given how local district-level education policy is. What sort of steps do you think can be taken to move in that direction?

A: There’s a mix of both policy steps and then there are things that need to happen at a grass-roots level. Policy steps are expanding access to pre-K because if only a tiny percentage of kids in the community are in pre-K, it’s hard to do alignment between the pre-K and the kindergarten. Some other policy steps are supporting common quality standards across different programs. But a lot of this alignment is also just about what people at the local level are doing. In a lot of communities, the principals of the elementary schools don’t know anything about where the children in schools are coming from, what the programs are in that community.

So just getting principals out to visit child-care centers, there are ways districts could create opportunities for pre-K teachers in the community to come in and take professional development programs with pre-K teachers in the school or with kindergarten teachers in the school, those types of activities. Data is another policy piece, of course, in terms of building data systems that can track where children are before schools. We have data systems in the K-12 phase, but if you’re paying for pre-K or if you’re paying for Head Start, you’d like that data to go into the same systems so you have a consistent record of where kids have been, and it doesn’t just start when they’re 5 years old.

Q: Two states seem to stand out for their focus on early childhood, New Jersey and Oklahoma. Are those programs working at expanding access and providing high-quality education, and also given fiscal problems that can wreak havoc on a lot of social services in states, how sustainable are the funding models, and how replicable are the successes they’ve had?

A: Both the Oklahoma and New Jersey programs have evidence that they are effective. We have a study in Oklahoma that shows that children participating in the program are making significant earning gains above and beyond what they would otherwise make and that, Oklahoma’s program is universal but we know from the data that we have that everybody benefits, but poor kids benefit the most. It’s actually possible with universal pre-K in Oklahoma to improve learning for everyone while also moving to close the achievement gap. So that program seems to be working pretty well, it has a very high pickup rates, in terms of the number of 3- and 4-year-olds in the state participating. I think it’s 90 percent, which is much higher than any other state.

New Jersey’s program is only in these 31 very-high-poverty districts, but in those districts it’s a very high-quality program. New Jersey has actually done more than any place else to align that program with what’s happening in the early elementary school grades and has in some districts made really important reforms in the kindergarten through elementary grades that try to retain the benefits of pre-K. Also we have data from New Jersey that shows that children in the average pre-K program are making substantial learning gains and that these gains are being sustained up through the end of first, and I believe we now have the data on second grade, but I may be misstating that. That’s important because there is some argument about whether or not pre-K gains are sustained over time, and in New Jersey they seem to be sustaining them better than other places have.

The fiscal situation is tough. I don’t think either the existing programs in Oklahoma or New Jersey are going to go anywhere. Oklahoma’s program is part of their state school funding formula for public education, so you can’t just cut pre-K. If you cut, all the schools in general get cut. But it’s not like a separate pot of money that you can say, “Well, we’re going to stop funding pre-K to help our budget situation.” It’s part of what school districts get for having kids.

In New Jersey, the Abbott pre-K was something that was mandated by the court in school finance litigation, and what Governor [Chris] Christie has said is that he recognizes the value of the existing program and is not intending to cut that, but New Jersey a few years ago passed legislation that was going to expand the program to many more kids, and because of the budget crisis, that’s not happening. We’re seeing that in a lot of cases. Over the past decade, there’s been a dramatic increase in state spending on pre-K, a dramatic expansion of kids enrolled, and that basically isn’t happening anywhere anymore because of the budget crises, and in some states we are starting to see cuts in those programs.

Q: Even before the current crisis, it seemed like a tough road going for people trying to pass expansions. You had the ballot initiative in California that failed and things like that. Politically, how do you think state level or federal activists are going about or can go about pushing for these sorts of things? It seems like something where there’s not an easy interest group constituency for it.

A: I think that’s right, and in the past decade up to about 2007, I would say, the pre-K movement, which is a very, very savvy and strong advocacy machine, even though they don’t have the same kind of powerful constituencies other people do, has been really effective in getting expansions, getting quality improvements in a lot of states. The funding, I think, more than doubled between 2002 and 2007, that states were spending on pre-K. There’s been some really effective advocacy there. The biggest issue is just that this stuff is really, really expensive. Even though we have research showing that the long-term benefits outweigh the costs and that over the time these investments save taxpayers money, that doesn’t change the fact that legislatures need to figure out how to pay for it today.

So finding money is difficult, and we have in our society an unwillingness to recognize that raising children is expensive but that it’s something that benefits society, if all our children are raised in ways that maximize their potential, and we’ve been really unwilling to invest in kids. I think there’s an attitude in our culture that treats children almost as another luxury consumer good for parents, and says, “Well, parents shouldn’t have kids unless they can pay for them.” As opposed to recognizing that these are people that we, as adults, because they’re children, have an obligation to, but that at the same time supporting their healthy growth and development does yield dividends for everyone regardless of whether they’re our children or not.

Dylan Matthews is a student at Harvard and a researcher at The Washington Post.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/08/everybody_benefits_but_poor_ki.html