My first impression of the nursery was that it was very organised and that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with them, but after a while I got the hang on it and it was quite easy. The children were very fun and enthusiastic to meet me and read me stories which show they have confidence.
The role of a pre-school teacher is to:
- Attends preschool each day the school is in session.
- Works closely with the parent education instructor regarding educational programs and the needs of the group.
- Plans and tools a developmentally appropriate curriculum for the children's preschool.
- Sets up the preschool environment. Directs the preschool's daily schedule, supervising free play, and clean-up and leads group times with the children.
- Checks supplies often and sees that they are purchased.
- Directs the parents in their role as assistant teachers, making suggestions that will help parents to work effectively in the classroom and with children.
- Models appropriate interactions with children, to include factual commenting, redirecting and problem solving.
- Attends board and preschool meetings sharing the curriculum and feedback regarding preschool happenings.
- Attends teacher meetings and in-services offered by South Seattle Community College, as well as workshops and classes relating to Early Childhood Education.
Preschool teachers help their students learn mainly through play and interactive activities, capitalizing on children's play to further language and vocabulary development. As a preschool teacher, you might use storytelling, rhyming games, and acting games to improve social skills, or introduce scientific and mathematical concepts. Most preschool settings employ a less structured approach, including small-group lessons, one-on-one instruction, and learning through creative activities such as music, art, and dance. Lots of discussion and collaborative problem solving characterize the preschool classroom.
A preschool teacher must be patient, innovative, caring, flexible, and open minded, also they should have very good people skills to be able to talk and communicate with not only the children but also the child's parents / guardian
Timetable of a pre-school teacher
Task 2
- Select one client group and descried how your chosen service meets their needs. Not all the health, development and social care needs of this client group will be met by this service.
- Describe, using examples, how your chosen service work with other services to meet the needs of the client group
- Explain how the services provide equality and could meet the needs of a diverse cultural population.
My chosen client group is childhood; my chosen service is a nursery.
The nursery meets the need of the children by using P.I.E.S(Physical, Intellectual, Emotional and Social).
Physical Needs
The physical needs of the children, provided by the nursery is, food and drink, warmth, exercise, gross motor skills, fine motor skills, sleep, hygiene, and most important protection from harm.
Food/Drink
In the nursery and at home is a very important aspect of caring for a child. Mealtimes are set at a regular time, to set up good eating habits; food given is full of essential nutrients. Regular meal times and a proper diet promote healthy eating now and later in life. Art the Mini VIP’s Nursery they have 1 meal a day, and 2 snacks. They have their breakfast and dinner at home, but if needed the nursery can provide breakfast for the children. Around 10.00am they get given some bread sticks and soft cheese and with a drink of water. In the afternoon at 12.30pm the children have lunch, and they have a meal such as chicken and rice and some peas, with pieces of fruit for dessert, on some other days they have fish fingers and baked beans, the menu varies everyday, but with the necessary nutrients such as: minerals, vitamins, water, protein, carbohydrates, fibre and fat. With their meal they get a choice of if they want milk, water or juice. As children also need fibre and water in their diet in order to gain a balanced diet, for them to gain these they need to eat their fruit and vegetables. Fibres are needed to help them digest their food. They need water because the water helps get rid of toxins in the body, and help control the bodies temperature. Around 2.30pm they get given a piece of fruit this is either a apple, pear, banana or oranges and a cup of milk or diluted fruit juice or water, by giving them fruit this will allow their body to receive vitamin C , which will build up their immune system and can prevent them from getting ill. By them drinking milk their body is getting minerals such as calcium for strong bones and teeth.
Warmth
The babies and children at the Mini VIP’s depends of warmth and have heating’s so they can control the temperature in the room, so it’s not too hot or too cold if the children are too cold, they won’t be able to concentrate, and because of that they can become annoyed and restless, and even worse they can catch a cold because their immune system isn’t fully developed. If the children are too hot they can become irritable, very uncomfortable and might feel fatigue.
Exercise
Exercise is a very essential part is everyone’s daily life including infants, 30mins – 1 hour of exercise it needed. In the Mini’s V.I.P’s they allow the children to go outside and play two times a day, 15mins in the morning, 45mins in the afternoon lunch time. Outside they have a climbing frame, and tricycles and car that the used to move with their feet, they use artificial grass, for any children with any pollen allergies. When they come in from playing outside, the staff tell all of the children to sit around the table at which they eat at, and wait for them to all calm down, a few minutes later, they give them a snack or if its lunch time, their lunch. After they finished eating the teachers them puts out something creative to do, this can be from painting to playing in the sand box outside making sand castles. When the children have finished using their equipment, the teachers tell them to help them to stuff away such as folding up aprons, and putting away equipment.
Gross motor skills
Gross Motor skills are important for major body movement such as walking, maintaining balance, coordination, throw, catch, kick a ball jumping, and reaching. Gross motor abilities share connections with other physical functions. A six-month-old baby learns how to sit up with some support, a 12-month-old baby learns to pull up to a stand holding onto furniture, and a five-year-old learns to skip.
A child’s ability to maintain upper body support, for example, will affect his ability to write. Writing is a fine motor skill. Students with poor gross motor development may have difficulty with activities such as writing, sitting up in an alert position, sitting erect to watch classroom activity, and writing on a blackboard. [1] At the Montessori nursery they do activities such as running, skipping, jumping, and climbing on the climbing frames, riding on tricycles and scooters. All of this equipment is provided at the nursery. They also make sure when the children are listening to stories at story time or when its circle time that they sit up straight. Sometimes they get the children (aged 4-5) to clear up for example folding up aprons and carrying their paints into the kitchen with a steady hand.
Here are some gross motor skills that some children should be able to do:
- Run
- Walk a straight line
- Jump
- Hop
- Alternate feet walking down stairs
- March
- Stand on one foot for 5-10 seconds
- Throw a ball
- Slide
Fine Motor skills
Fine motor skills are much more difficult for pre-school children to master, because they depend on muscular control, patience, and judgement as well as brain coordination. The teachers are Montessori nursery help the children develop their fine motor skills by teaching them to cut paper into small pieces, cut food with a knife and fork, using paint brushes and how to use them properly.
With younger children they have jigsaw ouzel pieces which are very big, so it allows them to be able to pick them up, and the jigsaw pieces have their own slots so they will be able to solve it. They also have building blocks and geometric shapes large peg puzzles which are fun for them to play with.
When it’s reading time the younger children have thick cardboard books so they can turn the pages.
Here are some fine motor skills that children should be able to do:
- Paste objects
- Match simple objects
- Button a shirt
- Build with blocks
- Zip a zipper
- Control pencil and crayon well
- Cut shapes
- Handle scissors well
- Complete simple puzzles (5 pieces or less)
- Copy simple shape
Sleep
Sleep is very important in every living creature; sleep is the primary activity of the brain during early development. The amount of sleep everyone gets varies on their age. Children however depend on sleep to get them through the day, if not they can become very irritant, frustrated and might even fall asleep in class. Children need to have a set bed time usually sometime between 6pm and 9pm, as children depend on sleep they might even require a nap during the day, which is what they do at the mini VIP’s every day at 13.00, but only for children between 0-3, once they reach 4 they are trained to stay awake throughout the day, so when they go to school they are not dependant on sleep during the day. We all need sleep to help us calm down from a busy and stressful day, where ever that may be, whilst we sleep we grow (but once you reach an adult you stop to grow), and we recover from injuries.
Hygiene
Hygiene is very important because if people (including adults) have lack of hygiene they can become ill, for example if you were to put raw meat on a surface in the kitchen, then you were to put fruit over it, without cleaning it with anti-bacterial spray, and you were to feed the children the fruits you can give them salmonella. At the Mini VIP’s nursery they have to be very careful when preparing food for the children as the children can pick up infections and bugs very easy as their immune system hasn’t yet full developed. At the mini VIP’s they deal with hygiene very well for example if a child was to wet themselves in the play area, the teacher will evacuate everyone out of the room and clean up the mess, and because the children bring in their own spare clothes, they will then put on rubber gloves and change the child and put their soiled clothes in a plastic bag for them to take home.
Children also need good personal hygiene because if they do not have good personal hygiene it can become very unpleasant. For the children to have good personal hygiene they have to use soap and shampoo to get rid of any bacteria they have collected during the day, and make sure they nails are cut down low, because lots of bacteria collects there, and some children have a habit of bit their nails, and they can be consuming lots of filthy bacteria. At the nursery they have their own individual tooth brush which they use after their nap. Cleaning their teeth twice a day and using their own tooth brush is influenced at the Mini VIP’s. The staff at the Mini VIP’s make sure that children always wash their hand with soap, after using the toilet and before every meal, and when coming in from being outside. Deodorant is not to be used in the nursery because of children having asthma.
Protection from harm
Children will always need protection from dangerous things or people, and if anyone at the nursery suspects anything of the sort the staff will have to ask the child if anything is going on and home, and ask the parent too. At the nursery they have good security because they have two doors before you can enter the nursery. And they make sure the doors are locked so nobody can get in, and a child cannot get out.
If you were to see unexplained marks on a child or if the child doesn’t have good personal hygiene or the child says something that doesn’t seem right, you will need to write it down, then go to the line manager, and explain what you have observed or heard which it worrying you, and keep it to yourself. The line manager, if he is not a protection officer, will then go and ring the police or social services or a protection officer what you have just told your line manager. If he is a protection officer then he will go straight to the police.
Intellectual needs
The intellectual needs of the children provided by the nursery is, language skills, written skills, learning new skills, independence, and effective communication and making use of one’s abilities.
Bibliography
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Date viewed: 15-01-2012