My Connections to Play

“Play is a child’s work.” Play helps enhance a child’s readiness for more formalized learning.”

-Piaget-

“The ability to play is one of the principal criteria of mental health.”

-Ashley Montagu-

            When I was a child the person who supported me the most during play in my childhood was my mother. A form of play that I liked as a child was imaginative play. I would play with baby dolls which I used for imaginative play and I would pretend that I was a mother taking care of my young baby by bathing, clothing, and nurturing my baby dolls. The support that I received from my mother encouraged my imaginative play and that one day I would become a nurturing mother and childcare provider.

Play for children today is much different from the play that I was engaged in as a child. Compared to my childhood the children of today they have a greater exposer to television, movies, computers and cell phones than I did when I was their age. When I was a child, the children in my neighborhood, we would play baseball on a dead-in street and play jump rope, hop scotch, and basketball at the neighborhood basketball court.

            When we become adults we sometimes forget how to play or we don’t make time to play. Play for adults were more of a leisure activity where our brains are free and we are not really making the connections to play as a young child will do during play.

A Note of Professional Thanks

 I would like to thank all of my colleagues for your support and I especially like to thank Dr. Myers for being so concerned about my health during this eight weeks. I enjoyed reading all of your blogs and discussions during the eight weeks of class.

Thanks again and I wish you all the best in your education journey.

Jannell

When I Think of Child Development

Herbert Hoover, 31st U.S. president

"Children are our most valuable resource."

Princess Diana, Princess of Wales

"Hugs can do great amounts of good, especially for children."

Dr. Seuss, author

"A person's a person, no matter how small."

http://www.compassion.com/child-advocacy/find-your-voice/famous-quotes/default.htm

Testing for Intelligence

 I believe that the whole child should be measured or assessed because you need to look at how that child learns and what that child knows in order for you to know what level that child is on at the beginning of the school year. If you can find out what a child knows, it will better help you to know how to help that child. Because I have learned that all children they learn at a certain pace than other children in your classroom. When I assesse my children in my classroom I like to do the assessment one on one, that way I will be able to focus on what that child knows or doesn’t know at the beginning of the school year.

The country or region of the world that I chose was Ethiopian school in Africa. In what ways are school-age children are assessed in Ethiopian by their age in the country by their height and teeth and “every year a student must pass a promotion exam, at grades 8&10 these are nationally assessed, otherwise they are regionally assessed (A-CET, pg.1).”

I would like to share a few websites with my colleagues for assessing young children in their classroom: www.indiana.edu/~intell/index.html history of intelligence testing and www.nwrel.org/eval/index.html Northwest Regional ED. Lab. Classroom assessment for them to learn more about testing for intelligence.

Jannell

www.a-cet.org/schools.php?id=110560

Consequences of Stress on Children's Development

The stress factor that I chose was racism. When I was a young child growing up in a small northern town, I had experienced racism in my town. I remember when I went with my mother to restaurants on Friday nights that we couldn’t go in the front but we had to go in the back to place our food order and we couldn’t use the same bathrooms that whites used. I remember as I got older me and my friends went to the movies on Saturday nights and the blacks had to sit down stairs to watch the movie and while the blacks that were sitting under the balcony, the whites would bend over the rail and spit on them and they started laughing because they thought that was funny. As a child dealing with racism was a big stress because as a black child you always felt like you had to look over your shoulder at all times. I always felt like blacks had no say so during the years of racism. My mother use to tell us that even though our skin color is different we are just as good as a white person.

When I think about my experiences with racism it made me think about how the Jews felt when Hitler didn’t like the fact that they were Jews and he wanted to have them killed and he looked at them as low class people.

Jannell

Child Development and Public Health

The Public Health that I chose is sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) which is “a situation in which a seemingly healthy infant, at least 2 months of age suddenly stops breathing and dies unexpectedly while asleep (Berger, p.153).”

This topic is meaningful to mean to me because I work in the daycare system and I work with the infants and I have to make sure to put them on their backs when they are sleeping. In the daycare system we have to take a class on SIDS in order to work in the infant’s room so that I can know what to do in case the situation ever came up while I am working in the infant’s room. In the daycare system sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is our main public health concern while the infants are in our care. The more I know about SIDS will help me in knowing what to do about if an infant dies while in my care.

I found information about sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) in a different part of the world which is Canada. According to the BC health guide it states “In Canada there are about 150 SIDS deaths each year and 1 in every 2,000 live births in Canada. According to the Healthwise staff they state that:

·         “In Canada, about 1 baby out of every 2,000 dies of SIDS.2 A national "Back to Sleep" educational campaign that pointed out the importance of placing babies to sleep on their backs began in 1999 to help educate parents and drop the rate.3

·         In Canada, the SIDS rate is higher for First Nations populations.2

·         The rate of SIDS deaths in other countries varies, in part because SIDS is not defined consistently throughout the world.(healthwisestaff,p.1).”

http://www.oceangrovemidwiferycare.com/links/pdfs/suddeninfantdeathsyndrome.pdf

https://myhealth.alberta.ca/health/pages/conditions.aspx?hwid=ue5019&

My Own Personal Birth Experience

What I remember about the event of the birth of my daughter on December 2, 1991: The events leading up to my personal birth experience that I can remember is that my first couple of weeks into my pregnancy I had some complications where I had to stay off my feet for a while and then I remember being sick for about three months and then I remember eating everything in sight and getting bigger and bigger. Then, I remember that my due date was to be on November 26, 1991 but that didn’t happen, so I went about a week past my due date and I remember my doctor wanted me to come to the hospital on December 3, 1991 to induce my labor but that didn’t happen because my baby girl decided she was ready to come into this world before I was to be admitted into the hospital on December 3, 1991 then I remember going for a walk down the street from my house on December 1, 1991 that night and when I went to sleep that night I woke my husband up around 1:00 am that morning on December 2, 1991 and told him it time to go to the hospital.

Then once we got to the hospital I had to wait until I got to 10cm but before I could get to 10cm I started having birth complications when my baby’s heart rate went down and the doctor was trying to get my baby’s heart rate to come back up, so then I had to have an emergency cesarean section and when I woke up they said it was a little complication with the delivery because my baby’s head had got stuck and the doctor had to use a pair of clamps on her head to pull her the rest of the way out but after all that I had a healthy baby girl born on December 2, 1991. I chose this example because I had experienced for myself what a medical invention was like when I had to have a cesarean section almost about 20 years ago. My thoughts regarding birth back then was that I didn’t want any more babies if I had to get big like huge round ball and that if I hadn’t went through with prenatal development then my childbirth would have been a whole lot worse than just my baby’s heart rate dropping to low so prenatal development has a big impact on child development to me.

The region of the world or a country other than the U.S. that I chose was South Island in Southern Vancouver Island of Canada. What I learned about the South Island in Southern Vancouver Island in Canada is that on July 24, 2010 according to the author David  Karp states that “for the fifth year in a row Southern Vancouver Island has earned the dubious distinction of being the caesarean capital of Canada (Karp, p.1).” Also according to keep he states that more than one in three births on the South Island is a C-section, according to a 2010 report by the Canadian Institute for Health Information with its 34 percent caesarean rate, the region is tied with Metro Vancouver’s North Shore for highest in the country well above the national average of 27 percent. Women in Interlake, Man., had the lowest C-section rate in the country with just 17.6 percent of births performed by caesarean (Karp, p.1).”

David Karp.  (2010, July 24). South Island reports highest C-section rate. Times - Colonist, C.7.  Retrieved November 6, 2011, from Canadian Newsstand Complete. (Document ID: 2092061641).