Importance of Maintaining A Balance between Social-Emotional and Intellectual Activities in the Preschool
The preschool environment is a foundational stage in early childhood education and future progress in school and society. As a foundational place, the school should be equipped to maintain a balance between social-emotional and intellectual activities to achieve a holistic development in the children (Cook, Klein, & Chen, 2015).
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First, it is important to appreciate that at this early stage, children are drawn from their families where they have the comfort of enjoying the presence of their parents, relatives and more importantly their siblings. The children are drawn into an environment in which all is strange; strange rooms, food, people and activities ( Deiner, 2012 ). This creates a shock in the children, which will influence how they interact with all the elements in the new environment. This forms the basis of social-emotional education or activities. The activity should be designed to help the child cope with the new environment such as blending in and accepting to have fun in the new environment. This will improve the quality of the child's life at the school and subsequent levels and later on his interactions with society.
The school setup should be arranged to match the home comfort as much as possible to be acceptable to the young minds lest they will fear and hate the setup. The child will be able to learn skills such as taking turns, following instructions, self-control, problem-solving, group, and independent work, communication with fellow children and adults which are important skills in social and intellectual education (Cook, Klein, & Chen, 2015).
Secondly, the intellectual activities offered at school require energy and focus which may not be easy for the child to master. The process is tiresome and involves tasking the mind. The child is at school, but he does not understand why he is in school. The most important thing to the child is social activities. A mingling of social-emotional activities and intellectual work should be ensured to enable the child to appreciate the intellectual part of the school program. The two must be balanced so that the child does not consider school as a harsh setup where the mind is boggled with difficult concepts nor is he led to think that school is an all playground ( Deiner, 2012) .
Video 10.1 Conversations with Examples of Attending and Active Listening Communication Practices
Agreeing with the video
I agree with the video in emphasizing the need for active listening as a key feature of productive communication. The speakers involved in communication must listen to each other deeply to be able to respond mutually with each other through a clear understanding of each other which is only achievable through active listening; whereby active listening should involve paying attention and seeking for clarifications through the discussion. This is important in handling children with special needs (Cook, Klein, & Chen, 2015) .
Importance of communication
Communication in early childhood is very important and more importantly in special education as a tool to enable the success of the child's education. A learning process cannot be successful without an effective communication pathway through which the parties involved can share information and get feedback from the teacher to the learner and learner to the teacher respectively. Thus, communication in the special early childhood education is significant in enabling the child to communicate his needs to the teacher and enable the teacher to respond to those needs and make learning complete and enjoyable ( Deiner, 2012 ). The child should be taught communication schools through the initiative of the parents and teachers as well. This will give the child confidence to express himself at all levels of his education. The teacher also will be able to learn the strengths and weaknesses of the child and design lessons to meet those needs. These steps will be impossible if there is no proper communication channel established between the teacher and the child and the contribution of the parents.
Difficult aspects
Achieving a well-balanced communication is a difficult aspect for me to grasp. Even though one may know the elements that compose a wholesome communication, putting them into practice is the important lesson to be learned which is quite complicated for me especially after establishing a long history of poor communication habits ( Deiner, 2012) .
How to help others
Even though practicing wholesome communication is a difficult process, a gradual practice of the elements that constitute it will eventually lead to healthy communication. Many practice poor communication because they lack the knowledge of the correct communication habits and an understanding that they are doing it wrong (Cook, Klein, & Chen, 2015). Educating other professional is the best step that I would take to empower other professionals towards a path of meaningful communication.
References
Cook, R. E., Klein, M. D. & Chen, D. (2015). Adapting early childhood curricula for children with special needs . New York, NY: Pearson Education.
Deiner, P. (2012). Inclusive early childhood education: development, resources, and practice. Cengage Learning
