Permata Aulad

Source: National Literacy Trust - www.talktoyourbaby.org.uk



From the minute she is born, your baby is already amazing. She is born to be sociable but needs your help from her first day to fully develop her social skills. Talking, singing, smiling and listening to your baby will help to develop her brain.

• Babies are born with brains that have a huge capacity for learning and most brain development happens before the age of three. This is the crucial time to help your child learn to talk and communicate.
• He could hear and recognise your voice when he was in the womb, which is why he turns to look at you now. He feels comforted by your voice.

• By the time your baby is around two months old she will be cooing. By three months she will be focusing on you when you make eye contact and talk.

• Between four and six months he will be babbling to you in response to your smiles,
words and sounds, almost as if he is having a real conversation with you.

• It doesn’t sound like words yet because she is still learning how to use and control her lips and tongue. If you look carefully, you will see that her mouth movements are imitating yours. Try sticking out your tongue slowly, and
see if she does the same.

• Her first step is learning to distinguish sounds, such as being able to tell which voice belongs to her mother or father. She can do this in the first few minutes after birth.

• His babbles, gurgles and gestures are his first attempts at having a conversation with you. When you smile and respond it will help him on his way to becoming a talker.

• These clever moments may just feel like playing, but in fact they are important steps in your baby’s language development. This will help him to become happy and
confident, as well as help his future learning.

So, take some time out from household chores and spend time talking, singing,
laughing and communicating with your baby. You can’t wait until she is at nursery,
as that is leaving it too late. You will be helping to get her off to the best possible start, and she really is worth it.

Being firm and gentle -

A summarised information on PLAY taken from the Open University resources.

Why do Children need PLAY?

There is reason to think that children who have their play behaviour severely restricted, or who find it difficult to play, can become very unhappy, or worse. In a study of 26 young male murderers, Brown (1998) reported that normal play behaviour was virtually absent throughout the lives of these highly violent, antisocial men.

According to Katz (1998) there are plenty of opportunities for spontaneous play with blocks, dressing-up clothes, painting, collage and clay, as well as dramatic play.

An excerpt taken from the 'Curriculum Guidance/Frameworks and Play':

From an early age, play is important to a child's development and learning. It isn't just physical. It can involve cognitive, imaginative, creative, emotional and social aspects. It is the main way most children express their impulse to explore, experiment and understand. Children of all ages play.

(Dobson, 2004, p.8)

In some societies and cultures, play is an important element in the protection model of children, a model which presents ‘well-cared’ for children as those who are cocooned from the day-to-day life and anxieties of the adult world:

in modern Western society play has become marginalized and locked itself in a world of its own. It has grown into a highly differentiated and separate activity – an activity that separates children from the real, adult world. It has become one of the expressions for the banishment of children to the margins of society. Play has become an expression of a kind of activity that has no place in real society; something easy that children engage in while waiting for entrance into society.

(Strandell, 2000, p.147)

This particular concept of play arises from a particular view of ‘the child’, a view that sees children as different from adults: they are innocent in the sense that they are untouched by the cares of the adult world; they have the right to be protected; they have a degree of autonomy, but the extent to which they participate in the ‘real’ world is circumscribed, and lacking responsibility is almost synonymous with childhood. It is apparent, then, that attitudes towards children's play are socially, culturally and politically determined. This being the case, we need to be conscious that theories about the value of children's play will vary through time and place, and will be influenced by the dominant discourses about childhood, education and child development.

WHAT IS PLAY?

It seems that defining the word PLAY is very crucial and important. Most may not seem to understand what lies underneath the aims and objectives of PLAY. The quote by Dobson (2004, as above) might explained it all.

Another excerpt taken from the website:

What is important is that practitioners, parents and children within a setting share their ideas about what constitutes play and that we, as adults, are clear about why we value play. In order to do this, you need to take a step back and think about what you think play does and, from there, consider why it is valuable.

Words and phrases such as exploration, fun, freedom, investigation, enquiry, learning, social development, coping with anxieties, making sense of the world and using up energy are some of the many descriptions and interpretations of play activities.

The purposes and reasons for valuing play have included the view that it:

• utilises surplus energy;

• is natural for children and part of the innocence of childhood;

• helps children understand the social world;

• helps children to develop cognitively;

• supports children's developing communication skills;

• helps children to cope with their feelings and fears and to manage their emotional states;

• develops positive dispositions towards challenge, change and self-initiated learning.

• What are the BENEFITS?
  
  
  One of the beliefs challenged by the study's findings was that play is a valuable learning context because the children have ownership and are interested and self-motivated. The data suggested that children were often unable to gain much from a particular play episode because the practitioners assumed the children possessed a range of complex skills, ‘such as making decisions, carrying out their plans, co-operating with peers, sharing resources, problem-creating and problem-solving’, and in some cases this was not the case (Bennett et al., 1997, p.121). Children were also observed as being ‘hands on’, but not ‘brains on’; they would appear to be playing in the way the teacher had hoped and expected they would, but in fact they were not intellectually engaged (Bennett et al., 1997, p.121).
  
  
  It is often argued that play encourages children to be independent learners, but in order to be an independent learner the child has to develop a range of strategies and skills, ranging from selecting resources, through working cooperatively with others, to reflecting on what they know and what they need to know.
  
  
  HOW to achieve?
  
  
  - The Role of Adults in PLAY
  - The Settings helps in developing ideas
  - Be creative;
  - Play can be as simple as it could be, and it won't be necessary to be expensive.
  
  
  What else can PLAY help one to achieve?
  
  

  Observing children's play offers an important way in which adults can monitor and assess children's progress.

  Logging children's use of a particular activity or play scenario helps practitioners monitor how children use their time, their particular interests and any gaps in their experiences, so that practitioners can plan a balanced curriculum that takes note of children's strengths, interests and needs.

  (QCA/DfEE, 2000a, p.24)

  Playtime in a primary school offers a context where children's free play can be observed. Janet May, a teaching assistant from Yelvertoft Primary School, Northampton, describes how she draws on playground observations to inform classroom thinking.

  I love being around the children. It's very interesting for me to see them as a teaching assistant in the classroom, and then as a playtime supervisor outside. I can very often take back a lot of things to the teacher that have happened at playtime. Or maybe something I've seen in a child's character outside that I'm able to discuss with the teacher; and that might explain what's happening in class. So it's quite valuable to be in both situations.

  (Personal communication, May 2006)

  
  
  More...
  
  According to Cagliari, observing children in ‘unstructured’ or play activities may reveal what a child has already learnt. She suggests that in order to be able to plan future activities the adult needs to be a participant observer: taking part in the activity, listening to and discussing the children's ideas and engaging in self-observation in order to identify possible future paths of learning (author's personal notes on Cagliari, 2003a).
  
  Hyder (2005) argues that children can reveal a great deal through their fantasy and imaginative play, and that listening and watching is a crucial part of gaining access to children's ideas and feelings. Cagliari (2003a), however, warns about the dangers of seeing what we want to see. Children's play is complex, and we need to be cautious about assuming that, because we have observed the observable (i.e. what the children are doing or saying), we have accessed their thoughts and ideas. We need to be careful that we see what actually happens and not what we expect or want to see. There are always different ways of interpreting situations; these may not be ‘correct’ from a scientific point of view, but if we are not open to what we didn't expect, if we are not open to different ways in which a topic can be approached, the different connections it is possible to make, the different premises, then it becomes difficult to discover the knowledge-building processes of the children. It is important not to over-predict what will happen.

  • • • Source: The Learning Space, Open University

For more and clearer information, please visit:

http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=397481

Source: from Yahoo News

LiveScience Staff

LiveScience.com – Fri Aug 6, 5:25 pm ET
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20100806/sc_livescience/personalitysetforlifeby1stgradestudysuggests)

Our personalities stay pretty much the same throughout our lives, from our early childhood years to after we're over the hill, according to a new study.
The results show personality traits observed in children as young as first graders are a strong predictor of adult behavior.

"We remain recognizably the same person," said study author Christopher Nave, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Riverside. "This speaks to the importance of understanding personality because it does follow us wherever we go across time and contexts."

The study will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

Tracking personalities



Using data from a 1960s study of approximately 2,400 ethnically diverse schoolchildren (grades 1 - 6) in Hawaii, researchers compared teacher personality ratings of the students with videotaped interviews of 144 of those individuals 40 years later.

They examined four personality attributes - talkativeness (called verbal fluency), adaptability (cope well with new situations), impulsiveness and self-minimizing behavior (essentially being humble to the point of minimizing one's importance).

Among the findings:

Talkative youngsters tended to show interest in intellectual matters, speak fluently, try to control situations, and exhibit a high degree of intelligence as adults.

Children who rated low in verbal fluency were observed as adults to seek advice, give up when faced with obstacles, and exhibit an awkward interpersonal style.

Children rated as highly adaptable tended, as middle-age adults, to behave cheerfully, speak fluently and show interest in intellectual matters. Those who rated low in adaptability as children were observed as adults to say negative things about themselves, seek advice and exhibit an awkward interpersonal style.

Students rated as impulsive were inclined to speak loudly, display a wide range of interests and be talkative as adults. Less impulsive kids tended to be fearful or timid, kept others at a distance and expressed insecurity as adults.

Children characterized as self-minimizing were likely to express guilt, seek reassurance, say negative things about themselves and express insecurity as adults.

Those who were ranked low on a self-minimizing scale tended to speak loudly, show interest in intellectual matters and exhibit condescending behavior as adults.

Changing personality

Previous research has suggested that while our personalities can change, it's not an easy undertaking.

Personality is "a part of us, a part of our biology," Nave said. "Life events still influence our behaviors, yet we must acknowledge the power of personality in understanding future behavior as well."

Future research will "help us understand how personality is related to behavior as well as examine the extent to which we may be able to change our personality," Nave said.