Curriculum development for Early Childhood Education is very critical and important for the early childhood educator. The curriculum can be defined as the procedures for appraising the accomplishment of educational objectives through the children interacting with instructional resources, materials, and content in a planned manner. The values, performances, skills, and attitudes that the children are anticipated to learn are outlined in the curriculum. Furthermore, it incorporates reports of anticipated results of a child, explanations of resources, and the organized arrangement that is set to assist the kids to achieve the results.
In a scenario where children cannot control their temper and fights are frequently taking place, the educator should assist the kids to acquire autonomy and become accountable within their cultural context. Getting the children to become responsible and independent requires matching the environment and the activities to meet the child’s requirements to deliver the expected outcome. For the teacher to make plans, goals, and objectives that describe the general purpose of the schedule should be set, with the nature of a child in mind.
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Since the individual child’s values are to be incorporated into the plan, the goals and objectives should cover the development of the kids cognitively, physically, culturally, morally, and individually. Furthermore, the plan should be part of the larger school’s plan of activities to avoid a collision of the two. Moreover, the schedule improves the security of the children as they have a predictable plan of activities. This plan increases the confidence of the children as it allows them to explore all areas that they can and tend to push them to go beyond their perceived limits. Thus it is imperative that observation, assessment, evaluation, and documentation of the child’s every move be attained with precision to devise a curriculum that would enable the teacher and child both achieve maximum potentiality.
Benefits of a Curriculum
For any early childhood teacher, it is crucial that they understand the benefits of creating a curriculum. First, a curriculum is focused on the child’s strength and weaknesses; hence it is supportive and unique. Based on the age difference of the kids the plan is supposed to be selective, this is to say, toddlers and infants need a completely different curriculum from kids in the preschool. Toddlers and infants have different requirements physically, cognitively and socially from preschoolers hence cannot be mixed ( Van Hoorn et al., 2014) . Second, a curriculum motivates the children to learn by trial and error such as through discovery, experimentation, and exploration. When the children are left to learn on their own, they tend to develop self-confidence and become more independent.
Thirdly, the curriculum provides for children with special needs by providing for them activities that will support their development without them feeling segregated. Furthermore, both minority and majority cultures are equally represented in a curriculum fostering bonding between children of different cultural backgrounds ( Beaver, 2014) . Fourthly, the curriculum supports creativity by ensuring that there are several activities in which a child is indulged in, so the child has the advantage of finding out what suits them. Since it is not limited to classroom activities only, the curriculum further promotes physical development through the combination of movement within events during the day.
Even though curriculum development has several benefits, it is vital that the teacher ensures that the curriculum that is developed will help the children to attain the standards that are set by the state and federal governments. Educators who understand how to develop the curriculum will get the desired outcome and will use little effort in the process. Hence, a planning cycle is essential in ensuring that the teacher is on course ( Beaver, 2014) . Therefore the teacher will be required to be familiar with their goals and objectives before developing a systematic scheme for observation, documentation, and arrangement of the notes. Moreover, it is imperative that each child’s portfolio is created and if possible they should be made to look unique.
Planning a Curriculum
With the help of the set goals and objectives, the educator should observe the children and recording whatever they notice the children doing. More so, the samples of the children’s work should be properly saved in the portfolios. Using observation notes, each child’s developmental area should be sorted out and labeled with the relevant objective to the observation ( Branscombe et al., 2013) . Each kid’s advancement is then correlated to the objectives of the curriculum, and a summarized conclusion is documented. Each child’s family is then given the information in a planned way so that with the help of the teacher plus the family members can plan activities at home that reflect what the child is taught at school. Observation of the child proceeds while reflection is made on the whole group.
Both the teacher and family members should understand that each child is competent, inventive, full of ideas and strong thus should be assisted accordingly. When all the parties understand the rights of the child, then it would be easy for them to construct an environment where the child can learn directly from the environment ( McLachlan, Fleer, & Edwards, 2018) . Moreover, the relationships between the teacher, family, society, child, and environment are crucial in the development of the child. And it is the teacher’s sole responsibility to ensure that the curriculum is not rigid but has provisions for allowing modifications now and then. Similarly, the teacher should always provoke the children to elicit more thoughts and action from them that further encourage them to make symbolic representations in different materials.
Observation
Observing children for curriculum development is very critical as the teacher gets to notice behavior that is related to age as well as differences amongst each student. Observation helps in the identification of the strength and weaknesses of the child plus it is a good way to collect data on the student. Apart from the benefits of observation, the educator should remember to keep the information collected confidential and be as stealth as possible during the whole exercise of observation. The curriculum objective should be recorded in a way that is precise and clear ( Mac Naughton, Rolfe, & Siraj-Blatchford, 2010) . With this data adequately entered, it becomes much easier for the teacher to identify behavioral patterns that are consistent as well as areas where the child needs reinforcement. Therefore, the teacher should at no point make any assumptions regarding any behavior or child as this could lead to data that is either conflicting or misleading.
Assessment
This process is crucial as it provides information to patrons about anticipations, hence assist educators in organizing directives, and managers can improve systems. Assessments further help in recognizing kids who might need exceptional assistance and gives information for the accountability of the entire program.
Evaluation
The level of quality is of performance or result is determined through evaluation which also enables decision making based on the qualities demonstrated. Evaluation can be quantitative where measurements and use of statistics come into play or qualitative which can be achieved through interviews and observation.
Documentation
It is essential that a teacher validate the reasons and the type of data that they need to document. Questions such as who to target, is it the family, child, or administration and what to document could assist the educator in knowing what information to collect and how to document it ( Beaver, 2014) . Different information requires different treatment for instance when the teacher asks why he/she needs to collect information on child success; the answer could be for national accreditation, sharing the success with the parents, planning for improvement of the schedule, or compiling data for funding. Hence, it is necessary for a teacher to have a guideline on how to go about documentation.
Conclusion
The individual child’s values should be incorporated into the classroom curriculum; hence the goals and objectives should cover the development of the kids cognitively, physically, culturally, morally, and individually. Furthermore, the curriculum should be part of the school’s plan so that the results from the data collected can be used in planning, compiling reports for funding, or even improvement of the school’s programs. A curriculum builds the bond between the teacher, the child, and the family. It further assists both the teacher and children achieve most of their potential capabilities.
References
Beaver, N. (2014). Early Education Curriculum: A Child’s Connection to the World . [Cengage]. Retrieved from https://cengage.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781337515146/
Branscombe, N. A., Burcham, J. G., Castle, K., & Surbeck, E. (2013). Early childhood curriculum: A constructivist perspective . Routledge.
Mac Naughton, G., Rolfe, S., & Siraj-Blatchford, I. (2010). Doing early childhood research . McGraw-Hill Education (UK).
McLachlan, C., Fleer, M., & Edwards, S. (2018). Early childhood curriculum: Planning, assessment and implementation . Cambridge University Press.
Van Hoorn, J. L., Monighan-Nourot, P., Scales, B., & Alward, K. R. (2014). Play at the center of the curriculum . Pearson.
