Early Childhood Education

[palmchristy]

Will any one share his/her experience on conducting early childhood education to the baby/toddler?

[palmchristy]

OK, I refine the question. Any one conduct early childhood education to baby/toddler? What are you actually doing?

[palmchristy]

The early childhood education to my daughter in the first 6 months was mainly focus on playing games to let her see, hear, touch a lot of things. For example, let her see some chess broad like square, talk to her and sing to her all the time, tell her the names of everything at home, go to park and name the things surrounding her, encourage her to creep and crawl.

What is your experience?

[rani]

Palm,

Sorry for not replier earlier. I guess its because I feel terrible I don't do a lot with D. ;-(

We sing songs, read books and we love to dance.

[palmchristy]

rani,

Thank you for your reply. Our toddlers are on the same month.

Just curious, what make you feel terrible on early childhood education?

I agree with the statement that "parent is the first teacher of the children" as we have good relationship with our children, we know them and love them much more than the teacher in school in the future.

There are many things that we can do before "handover" our children to the education system.

[shri]

Some random thoughts.. I'm in a rush to get some stuff done... so excuse my typos. I think faster than I can type...

The best people to answer this question i.e. what should one be doing are your parents and grandparents. Ask them what they did for early childhood education and most of the time the answer is.. we let you play around.

Most of the stuff you see today is marketing companies working overtime. Specially flash cards, baby einstein and other such titles... they prey on the parents insecurities that their kids will turn out dumb just because they did not buy the latest and greatest products.

We let D watch Sesame Street as it has some fairly educational stuff. He seems to love watching them. I really don't think he's learning any of the 3Rs but he is entertained.

I also have to take objection to the word "handover" ... the educational system does not replace the family support system. Subtle differences.. I'm sure you did not mean that you were going to dump the kid on the teacher, but you did seperate education into two phases.

There is a great book that I read (I think its on the geobaby store .. yes, I had to put a shameless plug for the store into the post).. which concentrates on teaching your kids the emotional values, some basic manners and empathy.. those are more valuable lessons for the kid before they go into the 'system'.

Things kids are more likely to learn from you at an early age .. (say 2 - 6 year olds)

-- Do you lie to get out of social situations
-- Do you treat other people nicely, specially those who may be poorer than you or people who work for you..
-- Do you discriminate against people
-- Do you gossip about your friends behind their backs

Funny thing .. we had a conversation over happy hour with some friends about HK kids having a high suicide rate. Some of the folks were keen to blame the educational system .. while I was blaming the parents for not providing the right support and moral / ethical values to their kids to know what is wrong / right.

Anyways.. I have to rush.. just wanted to pop in and provoke a good thread. :)

[shri]

Here's the book I mentioned...

http://shop.geobaby.com/product_info...oducts_id=1220

[palmchristy]

Apart from books (for setting up a book corner at home) and 2 sets of VCD, I did not purchase any education products nor attending any course. If one has idea on what early childhood education is (through reading books like the kind you recommended, thank you for that), he/she will not rely on those products so much. Child needs parent but not product. If parents give their time but not exert pressure to them, the number of unhappy children will decrease.

But I understand that given the limited time parents have with the child, they may select some education products. I would say that if the parent is using them together with their children, it would have some effects. But it would be better if parent play with them, talk to them, sing to them, go outside with them and enjoy.

Apart from the above, I am now doing something systematically which involves preparation of teaching materials for playing with my daughter. She has a very positive attitude towards the game I played with her using the materials.

I hope the discussion continue with more parents to share.