“My Connections to Play”

Growing up as a child, I was lucky enough to experience play in two different scenarios, one with my grandmother in a typical African village and also the other in a city. The play I experienced in my village is totally different from the normal play in the city. During holidays in my village, the older children taught the younger children how to dance in a folktale dance, and also hide and seek around the rubber trees; it was so interesting especially the dance that we look forward to every evening.

In the city, the most common play when I was growing up was playing with dolls and kitchen utensils, and also acting mummy and daddy, and sometimes we act the part of a very mean teacher, with the support and understanding of my friends we were able to act these parts.

The play now and the play when I was growing up are similar, acting roles and pretend play has been around for a very long time the only difference in play now is the more modern play items.

My thought on the role of play throughout childhood and adulthood is that, through play a child is capable to learn and develop both socially and emotionally healthy, confident and friendly, has a good relationship with peers, he or she is able to communicate well and this transcends through adulthood.

Relationship Reflection.

Relationship is a connection, association, or involvement, it can also be defined as connection between persons by blood or marriage (Dictionary.com)

Relationships/partnerships are very important to me, I feel because of a particular relationship or relationships we tend to strive high and keep our expectations very high too, it could be a blood relationship between parents and children or between husband and a wife.

The people I currently have positive relationships and/or partnership with are my children, husband and the teachers of my children.

The relationship between my children, husband and I has been a positive one, as parents we talk with our children in a way that they don’t hold back certain things relating to their academic work. We try as much as possible to create an atmosphere that encourages communication. We make them understand that it is okay to make mistakes, but that should not stop them from working hard to achieve their goals in live. As a mother my children and husband believe in me that when I set out to achieve something I try as much as possible to get to my destination no matter how difficult it may be because quitting is not an option. We basically form a kind of support system within us that keeps us going, knowing fully well that achieving our goals makes everyone of us happy.

The relationship I have with my children’s teachers help me in knowing more about their school work, it helps me to assist my children at home to make them understand better whatever topic they treat on a weekly basis. The factors I believe contributed to developing and maintaining each relationship is, communication, respect for one another, trust, understanding and believing in one another.

One of the challenges to developing and maintaining relationships that I have learned from my experience over time is lack of communication, understanding one another and also putting biases aside, when all these things are deep rooted in someone developing and maintain relationship becomes very difficult.

What I see as special characteristics that makes partnership, is the ability to communicate, and understand that between the two parties, if there is a two-way communication, they will definitely reap the benefits.

As an early childhood educator, my main goal is to help children to get to their fullest potential, and I can only achieve this by involving their parents to be able to be successful. My collaboration with parents makes me an active and reflective contributor because I rely on their input to help bring up their children in a more better way by reflecting on the feedback I get from them as it regards to their children

This quote about children draws my attention to how children develop at their own pace, how they progress sequentially through physical, cognitive, and emotional growth and change. As educators we have met a lot of children that are unique in various ways when it comes to classroom activities or outdoor when they mix up with their peers.

         Personally I draw inspiration from this quote, it makes me to have more patience in dealing with, not only children in the classroom but also my children because I believe that when the time comes for them to unwrap those beautiful qualities and knowledge in them, they do it in a beautiful way that you cannot imagine.

Testing for Intelligence?

It is very important in my country Nigeria to carry out a test during mid-terms and examination at the end of every term. But for the past 2 academic session in Panaga School Brunei my children have not gone through any sort of examination, but I can tell that they are doing well academically, so I ask myself “is examination the true test of knowledge”?

One of the things I believe should be assessed is the child’s chronological age and how ready that child is to start school. Viewing children holistically is the best step towards molding a total child and this is one of the goals of early childhood development, preparing the child to be ready for school, socially and emotionally healthy, confident and friendly.

Through this preparation a child should be ready for the school years ahead; he/she should be ready or have the ability to have a good peer relationship, and also be prepared to tackle challenging tasks and also have good language skills and communicates well.

The country I have personal affinity for is America, what they do on school readiness is wonderful. It is basically how prepared a child is before going into kindergarten, it also shows that school readiness is all about children, families, early environments, schools and communities. It shows specifically how young children develop at their own pace, recognizing and supporting children’s individual differences, and also establishing reasonable expectations for what children should be able to do when they enter school.

I would like to share that, even if the use of a child’s chronological age of entry into school is important, as educators we should also have at the back of our mind that children are just like butterflies, each flies with the way the wind blows it, some fly very fast why others fly slowly. With the use of the school readiness children will be taken into school based on age not mastery of skills. A school should be ready to help its children based on how equipped its kindergarten curriculum is, the curriculum should include child-guided and teacher-supported activities.

The chaotic abduction of the Chibok girls

# BRINGBACK OUR GIRLS#

On the 14^th of April 2014, gunmen suspected to be members of terror movement Boko Haram abducted about 270 girls from an all-girls government secondary school in a town called Chibok in northeast Nigeria. This Islamic Jihadist and terrorist organization based in northeast Nigeria is opposed to the westernization of Nigeria, which they maintain is the root cause of criminal behavior in the country. Thousands of people have been killed in attacks perpetrated by the group, and the Nigerian federal government declared a state of emergency in May 2013 in Borno State in its fight against the insurgency.

This Islamic Jihadist and terrorist organization has been causing a lot of chaos in Nigeria, they started with the bombing a lot of catholic churches every Sunday morning putting fear in all Christians especially the Catholics. In order to fight against this attack, security measures were taking every Sunday morning before mass.

Since 2010, Boko Haram has targeted schools, killing hundreds of student. One of the consequences of Boko Haram attack on school children especially the girls is lack of interest in continuing their education because of fear of being kidnapped or in worst scenario killed.

One of the country that is experiencing this particular stressor is Pakistan, we all had about the story of Malala Yousafzai  the Pakistani  school girl that was attack on her way back from school with her school mates in the country’s northwestern swat valley. From the interviews carried out by various news networks, to hear from these victims about their experiences, you can tell that most of them are still traumatized by what they went through.

Picture of  Malala and the Chibok girls (Photo from the web)

Malala (Photo from the Web).

Child Development and Public Health

Nutrition/Malnutrition

With so many fast food joints, dense schedule of working, unhealthy food becomes the order of the day in the developing countries. Malnutrition beginning in infancy and continuing through early childhood contributes to the one-third of all child death (UNICEF, 2008, and slows later growth, including growth of the brain). Nowadays we see a lot of obsessed children in developed countries because of their customs of eating a lot of sugary things and their parents just can’t say no to their children over having certain food items, and that causes more harm than good to the children’s health. Studies and researches have shown that an epidemic of heart diseases and diabetes is spreading worldwide as overfed children become overweight adults.

Although high number of children eat more than just enough calories, most of the essential nutrients are left out of their diet for example, iron, zinc and calcium because the now drink less milk and a lot of fizzy drinks. With the generational in life styles in developed country, we see a lot of obsessed children due to lack of exercise compared to the way their parents and grandparents did by feeding animals, walking miles to school and playing outside. With a lot of technological advancement you see a lot of children playing indoors as against what their parents and grandparents did.

This topic is meaningful to me because of the effects of nutrition/malnutrition in the developing child. When we talk about development what come to the mind are the three domains of development which includes, biosocial, cognitive and psychosocial. For a child to be well-rounded, that child’s nutrition should be placed as number one priority before other functions will take place while underweight causes a lot of malfunctions in the human body, overweight causes a lot of social damage to the growing child. Obsessed children are bullied more often even if they possess qualities that can discourage bullies, such as having social skills or doing well in school, this can eventually make them sad and depressed eventually.

Malnutrition is a very big problem in Nigeria, with its constituents of protein-energy malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies continue to be a major health burden in developing countries. It is globally the most important risk factor for illness and death with hundreds of millions of pregnant women and young children particularly affected. Apart from marasmus and kwashiorkor (the 2 forms of protein-energy malnutrition), deficiencies in iron, iodine, vitamin A and zinc are the manifestations of malnutrition in developing countries.

I believe this information may impact my future work in the sense that I now know the implication of both nutrition/malnutrition as regards to the health and wellbeing of young children whether it has to do with underweight or overweight.