Areas in the Early Years Foundation Stage

Areas in the Early Years Foundation Stage Building positive relationships To build a positive relationship with a little person is not always easy. Some people are really opened and easy to get along with but then some are uncommunicative so they would rather be alone and do their own thing than play and talk to others. Also, children’s behaviour is unpredictable, you just never know what is behind the corner. That is why you can not work in child care setting thinking you act the same with every single person. Unfortunately it is not that easy because personalities are different and every child is an individual who needs different kind of care. The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) is the statuary framework that sets the standards that all early years providers must meet to ensure that children learn and develop well and are kept healthy and safe. These standards are: The promotion of the welfare of children in the child care setting Appropriately screened adults to work with the children A suitable environment, equipment and premises Correctly maintained documentation The provision of an organisational structure in which they can learn and develop emotionally, socially, physically and intellectually It is extremely important that the adults working with kids are working for these standards especially when they are OFSTED registered because simply not working with these rules and being registered with OFSTED is against the law. Children learn best when they are healthy, safe and secure, when their individual needs are met and when they have positive relationships with the adults caring of them. With these rules child care professionals have learnt how to implement the 6 learning goals, which is worked out by The Early Years Foundation Stage, in the child care setting. The Early Years Foundation Stage consists of six areas of learning and development which are: Personal, social and emotional development Communication, language and literacy Problem solving, reasoning and numeracy Knowledge and understanding of the world Physical development Creative development Most of the areas are covered simply just the children being in the child care setting surrounded by intelligent adults and of course other children whom they are socialising and playing with. Only playing with other kids brings out most of the six points in individual but obviously it is not enough. With manners, literacy, numeracy, knowledge and understanding of the world kids do need a little help from the adults but that is why professional carers know all different type of activities and exercises that are good for learning and development. People working with children have been taught to observe every person so they know what every single individual needs to learn quicker, how to learn and to develop more. Obviously it is always good to communicate with other carers and of course parents, to make the best decisions out of it. Children’s respect to other people comes from an early age, it all depends of the environment they have been raised up in but also of the parents, what they have taught to their children. It is typical the kids believe in the same things as the adults living at home but it is not always good. As the time goes on, there is so many changes in life that older people do not accept but we can not teach our kids to do that. That is why it is important to teach children from young age to respect and value individuality. We often find children who do not have any siblings not really respectful to others, because they have used to get everything they want but also there is no-one at home they have to share their things with. There is lots of responsibilities coming from home that parents need to do but also if the kids attend nursery or a child care setting, carers have their own part of raising children to become responsible young adults. Going to the child care setting regularly definitely helps children to understand other children’s needs and how to communicate and play with others. Professional carers have been taught how to deal with young people. They know how to act in front of and with the children so they have no bad example they could take from the adults. But communication is the key! Carers and parents definitely need to talk things through, because children get confused and nothing good comes out of it if adults at home are acting very different to the ones at the child care setting. It is also very easy to teach kids through games. Games teach how to share things, how to communicate with others and when difficulties appear, how to solve problems and arguments. Really good for this are role plays. But it is important for adults to stay on the side and observe so they could help to understand the situation of the problems and find the solution together with the kids involved. Showing children that everyone in this world are equal no matter their culture, material status, skin colour or age, could keep them away of trouble when being kids but also in the future. It is important them to tolerate and value individuality. Keeping positive behaviour and avoid negative at home and also in the child care setting, is probably every parent’s and carer’s dream. But the thing adults are usually struggling with is consistency. From my own experience when moved into my previous host family to look after the kids, they did have the same problem. It seems to be really difficult for parents to stick to what they have said. With two boys in the family to look after I made it pretty clear from the start what they can and can not to. Of course they tried to push the boundaries but I sticked to my words. The difference how the kids behaved with me and with the parents was huge. I knew when I asked them to do something, they did it and never had to ask twice but when parents asked, really often kids did not even respond. It shows clearly what these parents have done wrong and therefore they will not get enough respect by their own children. The main thing for parents is to keep their promises and keep up with consistency but the children need to also know that after every bad behaviour there are always consequences. It is really important for adults to keep up with this too, otherwise child will get confused and there will be no result. But recognising only bad behaviour and keep telling children off is frustrating for both sides. That is why we also need to notice the good things kids do. Nurseries and schools are often using stickers as a reward for a good behaviour. As children love stickers it is really good idea to use it in a child care setting. By seeing and noticing the good things kids are doing, they want to get noticed even more because they know it will also bring more attention from adults and of course they will get rewards. Parents and carers do need to be careful though because there is so many cases when children are using this and will blackmail the adults to get what they want simply just misbehaving when the parents will not buy something they wanted. But there should not be any problems when the rules are clear from an early age. In every household and child care setting children and adults are really often facing conflicts. It is usually between children who are fighting over toys or attention, or problems are appearing simply because of lack of social skills, hunger, tiredness or lack of suitable role models. But sometimes we do see conflicts between children and adults. Usually caused because of not enough attention, generational clashes or because the middle child has been forgotten about. So what should we do, to solve these problems?! And at the end of the day, are conflicts good or bad? The KidsHealth website gives advice for parents to give some more privacy to their children but also to trust them a little bit more. It is obviously more of an advice to parents with a little bit older children who actually do know what they are doing. The website also says to listen and of course to do more explaining. Kids should be taught to ask adults to explain things through so the conflict would not develop. So, is conflict good or a bad thing? Many theorists agree that it is a good thing and it helps children to develop. Piaget believed that conflict in children was healthy, and if worked through, would help children to overcome their egocentric thought patterns, Erikson believed that to become a better person one must resolve the conflict in each stage of life, because life is full of conflicts. And Vygotsky thought conflict is more like a learning progress, he believed that children will learn from the conflict. Many different child care facilities seems to think that conflict is a part of human nature and kids needs to have the skill to solve a problem without an adults help. That is why they believed it is an adults responsibility to give children conflicts to resolve, at this point with adults but by the time they are all grown up, they can do it themselves and through this, survive. Keeping the perfect parent/carer and friend relationship at home or in the child care setting might be sometimes really difficult. Kids often just would not take well an adults telling them what to do, or how to behave with others and also by teaching them, children would not think you still want to be their friend. Still trying to be a friend but at the same time to stay professional, have children’s respect and keep up with the consistency is a hard work. But if this happens when children and adults find the perfect balance, it will be really good harmony in a whole household/child care setting, which is a good influence to everyone. Bibliography: http://www.kon.org/urc/dennis.html http://www.livestrong.com/article/84969-parentchild-conflict/ http://raisingchildren.net.au/articles/encouraging_good_behaviour.html http://discipline.about.com/od/disciplinebasics/a/Discipline-Kids-With-Positive-And-Negative-Consequences.htm www.kidscount.com.au/english/chapter11.asp www.childcarealgoma.ca/UploadedFiles/files/importance_of_observing_and_recording_children.pdf