Course and Unit Details
Course code | CHC50113 |
Course name | Diploma of Early Childhood Education and Care |
Unit code | CHCECE018 |
Unit name | Nurture creativity in children |
Section 1: Information for Students
Section 2: Reasonable adjustments
Assessment type:
Assessment Task 1 - Unit Knowledge Test (UKT)
Questions:
Q1: Explain the overall purpose of The National Quality Framework in terms of nurturing creativity in children. (30-60 words)
Q2: Refer to the National Quality Standard and identify and write down the national quality standard (NQS) that relates to children’s creativity? Give two (2) examples of how a program could fulfil this National Quality Standard.
Q3: (A) Refer to National Quality Standard and identify and write down the national quality standard (NQS) that relates to providing safe, positive and creative environments to children?
(B) Write five (5) considerations which could be included to fulfil this National Quality Standard.
Q4: Outline the four stages of intellectual (or cognitive) development according to psychologist and developmental biologist Jean Piaget.
Q5: Answer how activities in each of the following areas help child development and stimulate an interest and love of learning in children. 20-40 words:
Q6: List three (3) experiences from aesthetic, safe, interesting, challenging environments which are developmentally appropriate for children and encourage curiosity, experimentation, active learning, literacy and choice in them.
Q7: According to your service and its organisational standards, policies and procedures, list 6 materials and resources that are appropriate for infants, toddlers and pre-schoolers to encourage their creative thinking and use in an ECEC service.
Q8: How can creative development and aesthetic awareness be nurtured by early childhood professionals in an ECEC environment? (200-300 words)
Q9: Explain the significance of creative experiences in stimulating children’s curiosity and learning.
(50-100 words)
Q10: List ten (10) characteristics of a high-quality learning environment of an ECEC service.
Q11: Refer to your organisational standards, policies and procedures and explain how educators can encourage creativity in the service? (50-100 words)
Q12: List five (5) strategies you may include to support the following key component of EYLF framework:
Aspects of creativity are woven through Outcome 5, while the most direct reference is in the key
component ‘Children express ideas and make meaning using a range of media’ (EYLF, p. 42).
Q13: What opportunities should children have in an ECEC service. List any five (5).
Q14: Explain how each of the following skills (100-150 words) engage children and assist them to implement creative ideas:
Q15: Explain 'creativity' in the context of Early Childhood Education and Care services in 50-100 words.
Refer to newsletter 44
Q16: Explain how the physical environment including open - ended materials and loose parts can foster creativity in children. (200-250 words)
Q17: List ten (10) principles and practices articulated in the Early Years Learning Framework (Australian Government, 2009).
1. The National Quality Framework that is also referred to as NQF helps provide a domestic approach to regulations, assessments, and quality-related improvement areas for early childhood education and early childhood care (Fenech, Giugni and Bown, 2012). The purpose of NQF in terms of nurturing creativity in children includes increasing the educational and development outcomes and having better national policies for the overall development of children.
2. As per the NQS's quality area 1, three standards related to children's creativity. These include Standard 1.1, Standard 1.2, and Standard 1.3. This quality area aims to ensure that the national educational programs and practices can help children engage and enhance the mode of learning and creation (National Quality Standard, 2021). In this regard, while the students can develop in terms of community, wellbeing, and confidence as a learner in Standard 1.1, children are helped with imagining and decision making as per the Standard 1.2 and 1.3.
3. As per the NQS's quality area 2, two potential standards are found that relate to providing safe, positive, and creative environments to children. These include Standard 2.1 (Health) and 2.2 (Safety). While the Standard 2.1 found to be majorly focusing on areas such as wellbeing and comfort, health practices and procedures, and healthy lifestyles of children, Standard 2.2 is found to be focusing on areas such as supervision, incident and emergency management, and child protection respectively (National Quality Standard, 2021).
(B). The aim of Quality Areas 2 - Children's Health and Safety is to safeguard and promote children's health and safety issues. In this regard, the NQS could have also acknowledged the substantial potential of workplace management and children's health care. These include areas such as effective and significant staffing and other co-curricular area's resources (National Quality Standard, 2021). The mental health of early childhood is significantly found to be essential. For this purpose, the five considerations include workplace management, effective staffing, communication standards, emergency gateways, and resource inspection.
4. Jean Piaget was considered as one of the most significant psychologists and developmental biologists. He provided the theory of cognitive development that is also referred to as the theory of intellectual development. This theory included stages such as the sensorimotor stage, preoperational stage, concrete operational stage, and formal operational stage (Piaget and Inhelder, 2014). The sensorimotor stage was found to be focusing on children from birth to two years of age, preoperational on ages between two to seven, concrete on ages between seven to 11, and formal operational on the age group of 12 and above.
5.1 Children love to play. Thus, all the respective activities under physical health, wellbeing, and movement skills will help children participate more comprehensively to help develop interest and love for learning in children (Neuman, Newman and Dwyer, 2011).
5.2 In most of the cases, children can be treated more potentially through emotional and social connections. In this regard, all the activities under social and emotional development can stimulate interest in learning in them.
5.3 The activities under learning approaches will help children imagine and apply their creative approaches to generate knowledge about something. This way, the activities will significantly help in stimulating an interest in learning in children (Grazzani, Ornaghu, Agiliati and Brazzelli, 2016).
5.4 The activities under thinking ability and general knowledge will make a huge impact on the development of children. The children are found to be more curious to know about different things as compared to adults. Hence, this can stimulate interest in learning in them more appropriately.
5.5 The activities under communication, language, and literacy can help children learn about new languages. For this purpose, the TOFLE method's activities are hugely recommended and followed by the early childhood education and care institutions (Lam and Warriner, 2012).
6. Experience 1:
Such environments are found to be generating curiosity and will of learning amongst the children of the age group five to 12. Especially the aesthetic and challenging environments are found to be critically working for this purpose.
Experience 2:
Safe and interesting environments are found to be encouraging parents and significantly enhance the potential of early childhood education and care practices (Wilson, 2018).
Experience 3:
With that said, it has been found that children love challenging environments and using that as a mode of learning enables children to develop from the creative point of considerations as well.
7. To encourage children's creative thinking and abilities, below are the six resources and materials that might help them. These are cumulated keeping in mind the ever-changing environment for infants, toddlers, and pre-scholars to explore the ideal way to generate factors such as curiosity and imagination amongst them (Votruba-Drzal, Coley, Koury and Miller, 2013).
8. The creative development and aesthetic awareness precisely start with the ECEC professional's choices about setting-up the classroom. These include resources such as the materials presented to the children and the aesthetic way in which they are displayed. Children love to play and the most effective way of helping them learn and develop is also found to be associated through the mode of playing. In this regard, the materials and resources should be attractive enough so that children and toddlers can feel interested in playing and creating with them. Even paper cutting and art-craft can help the professionals nurture the ECEC environment. These might include having live plans and growing flowers in the classroom so that children can feel happy being in that system and not crawls to go back home. Someone quoted it right that "Children need to see themselves in the rooms" (Fox and Schirrmacher, 2014). For this purpose, the teachers and early childhood professionals are suggested to enhance more on the potential of creative development and aesthetic awareness in an ECEC environment. For this purpose, the cognitive theory of development suits the best while encountering with the respective authorities of the decision making processes for implementing such surroundings within the classrooms.
9. The aspects associated with curiosity are encouraging children to explore, learn, and thus discover new things around themselves. With that said, it has also been noticed that children love to share what they experience. Hence, this learning experience of sharing the knowledge learned helps and stimulates children to build-up many factors such as confidence and self-esteem (Dziedziewicz, Gajda and Karwowski, 2014). Hence, it could be potentially echoed that the significance of creative experiences in stimulating children's curiosity and learning is significantly essential to be considered more casually.
10. The ten characteristics of a high-quality environment of an ECEC service include –
11. There are five broad ways through which educators can encourage creativity in the service. These include the below ways –
12. The outcome five referred to as 'Children is effective communicators' under which the principle was found to be including the relevancy of relationship. In this regard, the five strategies that I might include to support this key component of the EYLF framework will include the following (Lefevre, 2015) –
13. The opportunities that found to be associated with children experiencing through ECEC services include (Burger, 2010) –
14.
Music –
Music helps in developing language and reasoning all at once. This mixture helps in improving the knowledge and idea of creation and thus, implementing the creative ideas (Isbell and Raines, 2012).
Movement –
Body movements are found to be helping in processing all the learning to date and also help in generating new ones (Isbell and Raines, 2012).
Construction –
The factors that are found to be related to implementing creative ideas and construction is the fact that constructing something requires a certain amount of visionary and image to be processed in the brain (Boaler, 2015).
Creative play and artistic activities –
Such activities and processes help children in processing their mind towards something that is perhaps soulful. This enables children to feel relaxed, engaged, and socially active, thus generating more creative ideas (Wilson, 2018).
15. Creativity is considered as an ability of the individual to develop and express himself/herself by generating new ideas more comprehensively. Creativity is found to be developing in the early years of childhood and thus, it is essential to nurture this factor especially while intervening with ECEC services (Vecchi, 2010). By generating a creative capability, various aspects could be easily resolved by the children while growing with the development stages. These include solving respective problems, communicating socially, and entertaining self while in stress or pressure. Hence, creativity in the context of Early Childhood Education and Care Services is a process of enhancing creativity aspects while implementing the curriculum for children.
16. The open-ended materials are found to be the materials which have no sense of direction in them and can be used by individuals to create and generate any shape or thing out of it. Such materials are found to be providing multiple uses and thus, endless play for the toddlers. In this regard, these materials can help children become creative and express themselves while they play (Neill, 2013). Children are also found to be engaged with the decision making processes of these materials and figuring out the ways through which they can use it well. Similarly, the loose parts are found to be including materials that are alluring, attractive, and beautiful so that children could easily adapt them to learn and create. These types of parts come with no specific set of rules and norms and thus, can be used with any material or set of materials and children, in this case, are also found to be engaged with the decision making processes of these materials and figuring out the ways through which they can use it well (Kiewra and Veselack, 2016). Hence, by exploring such items and materials, the children can become innovators, designers, artists, or collaborators who foster creativity in children.
17. The ten principle and practices that are found to be articulated in the Early Years Learning Framework includes the following (National Quality Standard, 2021) –
1. Secured, respected, and reciprocated form of relationships
2. Partnerships
3. High equity and expectations
4. Respecting and encouraging diversity
5. Reflective practices and learning
6. Adopting holistic approaches
7. Planning and implementing learning through play
8. Creating physical and social learning environments
9. Intentional teaching
10. And, Assessing and monitoring children's learning processes.