For Early years and education A04 I am going to plan and carry out an educational activity with a child.

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Early years and education A04

A04A        

For Early years and education A04 I am going to plan and carry out an educational activity with a child. In order to decide on what activity I should plan and carry out with a child I first had to select a child to participate in the activity. I had to think carefully about the child which I would select to participate in the activity as I had to consider what sort of activity I could provide the child with according to the stage of development which they are currently at.

Research

In order to appropriately plan an activity for a child I decided to research the different stages of child play to find out what types of activities would be suitable for children of different ages to participate in.

I found my research on a website which was  from which is a website which contains a lot of useful information on the different stages of play for children. The website explains that “children grow and develop as they go through the different stages of play” as they are learning new skills and developing new ideas.

The website states that the first stage of play is ‘solitary play’ which is used by very young infants as a form of play. The website says that solitary play is used by very young infants as “very young infants only have the ability to attend to one object at a time as once an object it out of their sight, it is quickly forgotten”. Solitary play is where infants play by themselves and not paying attention to anyone else even if they are in a room full of people. According to the website, this is because infants are “busy exploring and discovering their new world” and they are also “fully engaged in gathering information and storing it for further use”. This play is said to be the self centered t me whilst a child is developing.

The second stage of play is ‘parallel play’ which begins to show in children usually by the time a child is 2 years of age according to the website. Parallel play is where children are playing or doing the same activity as each other but they will not directly play or associate with each other as they will play next to each other as opposed to talking and participating in the activity together. The website states that “this kind of play involves two or more children being in the same room” and they may show an interest in the same toys and may therefore “may be in the same area and play with similar toys, but they do not play together” and play alongside each other only because they are in the same area.

The third stage of play is associative play according to the website as at this point “children extend their knowledge and play experiences”.  This is the stage of play which is used by three and four year old children as this is the age that they start playing together even though they are not working together or communicating with one another. Also according to the website, a leader tends to emerge when children are plating through associative play as they see themselves as being able to instruct and tell others what to do which is usually taken on by a more mature child in a group and the younger and less mature children in the group do not tend to question the mature child’s authority.

The fourth and final stage of play is ‘cooperative play’ according to the website which is usually demonstrated by children by the ages of four to five years of age. The website says that “cooperative play takes place between two or more children as they grow and develop socially and emotionally” and also that “children exchange ideas during the game or activity” which means that they are learning to communicate and develop social and communication skills which has a positive impact on a child’s social development. During cooperative play, children also learn to respect the property rights of others which is a clue that they are gaining social skills as they learn to understand that permission is needed to play with certain toys or materials and also sharing is very important whilst playing with others as it is important for a child to learn to take turns during a game or activity. The main that the website makes about cooperative play is that “communication about the play is the critical point of cooperative play”.

Following my research regarding the various different stages of play for children, I was able to make a decision on the age of the child which I wanted to plan and carry out an activity with. After much consideration I decided that I wanted the child who would participate in the activity would be between the ages of six and seven. I selected this higher age range as I believe that this is where children are at their final stages of early year’s development and they can be provided with more challenging activities to suit their abilities. This is also at the age which they play cooperatively with others which shows me that if teamwork is required at any time during the activity then they will be able to work together with me to complete it as well as being able to work independently.

As the other part of my research, I decided that it would be beneficial to know what a six to seven year old child would be learning about in their school curriculum so I decided to research this so that I would be able to try and incorporate some of the subjects the child is learning about at school into the activity to help them to learn more and therefore have a positive effect on the child’s intellectual development.

From my research I learnt that children in year 3 at school (which is the school year Francesca is in) cover Year 3 maths, Literacy and science. For this activity I am focusing on Francesca’s maths and literacy development although part of year 3 science does play a part in the activity. I got my research from the website:  which is a website which briefly explains the overview of what a child learns in year 3 in maths and literacy.

The website states that in year 3 maths children “will be encouraged to work sums in their head” which develops their mental maths skills. The website also says that children also “expand on the concepts of multiplication, division and fractions that they began in year 2” which means that the children would be challenged my learning more about what they already covered very basically in the previous year but they would still be learning as they would be learning about each topic in more detail and at a slightly more challenging level. The website also says that “calculating time intervals and converting measurements” are also topics which are covered in year 3. This relates to the activity as the child will be using measurements when measuring out the ingredients.

The other thing that the website states is that in year 3, children will build on their reading skills by “reading new words on their own” which would help to “develop their love for reading”. I would be supporting the child’s literacy development during the activity by allowing them to read the activity on their own so that they can independently read to help the child improve and develop their reading skills.

Improving different aspect of Francesca’s development

Once I had selected an activity from researching, I selected a cooking activity where the child would learn to make cornflake cakes. I selected this activity as I felt that it would be beneficial to the child if they could learn a challenging physical skills from a young age so that they would have the opportunity to try something new and hopefully learn new skills and improve on certain areas in their development.

In order to ensure that I was helping to improve different aspects of Francesca’s development I have specifically organised parts of the activity in order to help her improve in her physical, intellectual, emotional and social skills and development.

In order to help to develop Francesca’s physical skills through the activity I will try to encourage her mathematical development. I will try to do this by allowing her to measure out the ingredients which will be needed. Her mathematical development will hopefully be further developed by using the weighing scales which she will use with guidance and some assistance. She will use the weighing scales to measure out the ingredients which will challenge her mathematical skills as she will have to work out when she has the right amount of ingredients which will include using her addition and subtraction skills to ensure that she does add too much or too little ingredients . I will assist Francesca with little assistance in order to make sure that she completes this task safely and accurately.

I will also try to encourage Francesca’s reading skills throughout the activity. I will try to achieve this by writing out the instructions on how to make the cornflake cakes and simplifying them slightly so that she could read and follow the instructions by herself easily with little assistance. This will hopefully benefit her reading skills because she has to pay close attention to what the recipe instructions will instruct her on what to do so she could follow them accurately so allowing her to read the instructions have a positive impact on developing her reading skills.

Also, I will try to ensure that Francesca actually enjoys the activity. If Francesca enjoys the activity them it would positively benefit her emotional development as she would feel happy about achieving and learning new skills. She could also feel proud that she will learn and try something new so she will likely to be very enthusiastic about trying more new activities if she enjoyed it.

Finally, I will try to ensure that Francesca’s social skills are developed during the activity. I will try to achieve this by taking part in the activity with her which will allow her the opportunity to be interacting with someone and therefore developing her co-operative playing skills through working with others. This will hopefully improve her social skills by spending time with people and therefore will hopefully have a positive impact on her social development.

Plan:

Aims:

For this activity, I have selected a couple of aims to ensure that the child I am completing the activity’s purpose which is aiming to achieve and learn something from doing the activity.

My first aim for the activity is to make sure that Francesca learns something from the activity. I think this is the most important aim as the purpose of the activity is to help a child to learn something and by setting this as an aim I will be ensuring that I meet the purpose of the activity. I also think that if this aim is achieved during the activity then I would have helped to develop some of Francesca’s physical, intellectual, emotional and social skills which would have a positive impact on her learning and development.

My second aim for the activity is to discover what kind of learner Francesca is. I set this as an aim as I believe that if I can find out what kind of learner she is then it will help her find out the way in which she learns best so that she can apply the type of learning style she has to her school work to help her improve and progress more effectively in her work which would benefit Francesca’s intellectual development.

My third and final aim is to help Francesca to develop some aspects of her development such as her physical, intellectual, emotional and social development. These different areas of development will be put to use during the task as Francesca’s physical development will be encouraged as she will have to physically do the activity so she will hopefully learn some physically challenging cooking skills as she will also have to physically perform physical cooking actions which would help to encourage her physical development. Francesca’s intellectual development will be encouraged as she will have to read instructions and think carefully about everything during the task. I will also aim to positively affect Francesca’s emotional development as I am aiming to allow her to enjoy the activity. This would also make Francesca happy if she is able to enjoy the activity which would further positively develop Francesca’s emotional development. Finally, Francesca’s social development would be encouraged through participating in the activity as she would be interacting with the two other people who I am planning on including in the activity. By interacting with people during the activity, Francesca’s social skills and development would be encouraged in a positive way.

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Objectives:

In order to achieve the aims which I have selected to try and achieve throughout the duration of the task, I have outlined some objectives in the table below which I will use in order to achieve my aims.

Outcomes:

As a result of the activity I hope for there to be a few outcomes.

For my first outcome, I want the child to be able to learn that they can work independently whilst completing a task. I want the child to be able to learn this from doing the activity as it will give them confidence if ...

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